


Forget Me Not

by Anonymississippi



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Amnesia, F/F, Fix-It, every trope in the book, fake identity, honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 22:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5982799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Contrived, crackish, co-dependent witness-protection nonsense to work through my bitterness. Heads up for Insecure!Astra, Protective!Kara, and Anxious!Alex. </p><p>Or, the one where Astra falls for Alex because her memory's shot after an "accident," and Alex feels major guilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Between the Lines updates TOMORROW, but I had to get something out to work specifically through the Monday feels. This isn't proofread nearly as heavily as it should be, but here you go nonetheless.

Amelia will not look at the clock again.

She won’t.

She has more willpower than that, so she won’t look.

_She will NOT._

The digitized blue display above the stainless steel stove clicks to 2:39, and Amelia lets her forehead bonk against the front of her refrigerator, a groan of self-loathing gurgling up from the base of her trachea. She opens the door and grabs the pitcher of lemonade to place on the table, just in case Allie does show up. Allie likes lemonade, so Amelia always has it on hand. She paces the kitchen, moving from her spot at the sink to open the sliding glass door, allowing the early summer breeze to clear her head on this beautifully bright May afternoon, a lovely contrast to the glum disappointment Amelia registers internally.

She’s been dreading her meeting with Allie ever since last week, after she threw caution to that tantalizing wind and went for the one thing that made her feel _normal_.

That is, if normality consists of sexually assaulting the U.S. Marshal that’s been put in charge of protecting her secret identity for the past four months.

Amelia can’t even say if that’s what it was, assault, because that term shouldn’t be thrown around carelessly. But she had crowded the other woman against the wall in her corridor right when Allie seemed prepared to leave; she’d kissed her, tugged at her black shirt and ran her hands lecherously over her torso until Amelia forced Allie to make a move: Allie had pinned her hands against her sides and fumbled with the locator cuff the Marshals had given her that very first day after the accident.

She never took it off her wrist, not when she worked, not when she showered, not even when she’d decided to lunge for Allie. It was practically a part of her now, ever-present, glued to her skin.

It didn’t make any sense though, why Allie had acted so helpless initially. Why she had frozen beneath Amelia’s lips, like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. Amelia hadn’t been making much physical headway; plus, if Allie had really wanted to stop her, she _would have_ (she’s a government agent, slim, strong, trained—she could toss Amelia around like a ragdoll if she so desired). But therein lies the rub:

Allie hadn’t wanted to stop. Not really.

And so they hadn’t, not until they’d sufficiently christened a number of flat surfaces in the cozy ranch-style house with their amorous shenanigans, not until the sun was sinking low over Amelia’s sleepy, inland California suburb. She’d spent her final moments in bed tracing little glyphs onto Allie’s bare back with her fingertips—incomprehensible, nonsense symbols that frequently clouded her vision. Allie had rolled over and chosen not to look her in the eye until it was dimmer in the room, until she could get up without seeing Amelia’s face. She’d slipped from the covers quietly last week, and had started sifting through their separate articles of clothing to leave Amelia to her thoughts, to her imagination.

“I’m sorry,” Amelia had muttered, rising up to watch Allie tug her shirt overhead, her crop of dark, silky hair just brushing the tips of the collared polo.

Amelia really liked Allie’s hair. Nothing like her own, a wavy, mud-brown mess, with a curious white streak at her temple that no amount of dye could seem to penetrate. She wondered if it came from the accident, or if she’d had it her entire life.

“But you anchor me. I’m not so lost without you.”

“This was a mistake,” Allie had mumbled.

She’d watched as Allie buckled her hefty utility belt back in place, tucked her shirt in, and ran a hand through her mussed hair.

“Will… does this mean you’ll come back, Allison?”

“… you know that’s not my name.”

“Right,” Amelia had responded, because she recalled, on their very first meeting, that Allie preferred the shorter version.

“I can’t make any promises,” Allie had said, as she laced up one of her black boots. “You have to understand this is… highly unorthodox. I’ve… broken protocol.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“Ast—‘melia,” Allie had mumbled, shaking her head in defeat.

Amelia tried not to let it bother her; she truly did. She’d only heard the name twice since Allie had begun her routine check-ups after the accident, once in the first month, when she’d said something particularly clever.

“Oh god, _Astra_ ,” Allie had chuckled, her moonsicle grin suddenly crumpling as soon as the final syllable made its way out of her mouth. She’d recovered quickly enough, and Amelia had almost convinced herself she’d imagined the name, as foreign and cumbersome as it was for her own articulators.

_Astra._

Until Allie had kissed her back at their last meeting, had massaged that same name against her lips and jaw, her neck and lower. Not a mistake. A… mystery, perhaps. Whoever this _Astra_ was, well… she’s probably the reason Allie looked so crushed last week when they’d gone to bed. Why Allie probably wasn’t going to show up this week.

2:46.

Over a quarter of an hour late, when Allie’s only ever been punctual.

Amelia has been stuck in Jackson City, California, for nearly four months now. Stuck, she says, because Jackson City isn’t a city in the way that National City is a city, or Sacramento, or San Diego. No, Jackson City is just a place at the base of a mountain, squeaking by that 100,000 mark on the population scale, that connotes the proper _city_ title. It’s the kind of place that’s slow and usual and unexciting and safe, because it’s definitely not a _city_ city.

It’s the kind of place the government would hide a protected witness in plain sight.

A protected witness like Amelia Inzelli, now Amy Johnson, for anybody asking. A special case, U.S. Marshall Allison Smith had called her, when Amelia had woken up in a white-washed room with tubes coming out of her nostrils, a splitting headache, and a searing pain in her chest. It felt like she’d been cracked open with a rib spreader.

“We’re going to keep you safe,” Allie had said.

And so far, Amelia thinks, Allie’s kept her promise.

Amelia tries not to focus on the clock, and instead shuffles outside to the backyard, where she’s spent the better part of two months praying and tilling and nurturing and even pouring bottled water—during that really dry two weeks in April—onto the soil.

Her garden is magnificent.

French hydrangeas with velvety, powder blue petals overflow from the bed and onto her walkway. The canopy she’d built by hand in a single weekend is draped with bursting Lady Banks, a yellow climbing rose without thorns. The buds curl in on each other and form little halos of cinnamon brown bark, warped and wrapped tightly over the corners of the canopy. Her grass is starting to fade to a sickly, swampy brown; she can’t water it, not with the drought advisory. But she still takes time to hydrate her plants, sometimes in lieu of hydrating herself. She wonders, occasionally, how much she drank before the accident. She’s a bottomless pit sometimes, when it comes to food, yet can go for nearly two days without a care, not worried at all if food or drink ever passes her lips. She knows it’s not normal, but her constitution is rigid, powerful and robust, nothing like her plants.

There’s a honeysuckle vine that grows vertically along her back porch columns, Gerbera daisies in purples and mustards and magentas in ginormous pots that she never has a problem moving, even when they’re packed down with sixty pounds of potting soil. She’s got fairy lights strung up in the back of her porch, a swing with a cushion where she comes to read her weekends away, once she’s dirtied her hands and pushed her mower and weed eater around long enough to keep her content. And her telescope, her first purchase with the stipend the government had deposited in her bank account, stands proudly at the edge of the concrete, pointed towards Venus, then Orion, lost in the Milkyway.

The stars comfort her in ways other humans cannot.

_Humans._

She thinks it’s symptomatic of the accident, the episode, the thing _she still doesn’t get_ , that she removes herself from the people around her. Her co-workers, all good people. The customers, good and bad. But none of them stop her from feeling _separate_ , from feeling—completely out of place. The government set her up working retail, a mundane job in a department store where she mans the perfume counter, her senses undergoing some special torture nearly every day she clocks in.

_Torture_.

She shudders involuntarily.

The synthetic scents of the parfumerie give way to the smells of her flowers, of jasmine and lilies, of blood-red Hoary Fuchsia, the blooms drooping open like the tutus of fairy ballerinas, dancing in the breeze.

She wishes Allison would return, if not to explain… then for her to apologize for her unprofessionalism. Allie’s the only person who doesn’t make her feel like an outsider. They are both serious, studious individuals, but it’s very difficult for Amelia to keep a lid on how she feels; the government intends to keep her out of the spotlight, away from danger or any sort of rush. Which is why they placed her here, with the job she has. But the government never accounted for Allison Smith.

Everything besides Allison is so unbelievably _boring_ Amelia sometimes wants to off herself. Back in February, when she first got here, she’d seen advertisements for a Mud-run near the coast:

“But what if you win?” Allie had asked her one afternoon. “You’re not supposed to be drawing attention to yourself, remember?”

“Why do you suppose I’ll win?” she’d countered, and Allie had merely sipped the provided coffee, smiling over the lip of the mug.

Allie didn’t smile a lot in the beginning, instead opting for staunch professionalism. She was an intense, terribly well-educated young woman, soft-spoken yet fervent in her reporting. She always asked after Amelia, inquired as to any anomalies in her daily routine, questioned if anyone had approached her.

Because they were trying to keep her safe from the bad guys, and that was part of Allie’s job. Her concern only extended as far as her job would allow, and anything else Amelia hoped for would have to be pushed by the wayside. Some days, she really can’t reconcile her own emotions, especially having so little history to draw from.

After the accident, they’d tried to fill her in on as much as they could.

_Severe retrograde amnesia,_ the doctors said.

Amelia Inzelli was your average American citizen who’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some international eco-terrorists had planted a bomb, or organized a shooting, or orchestrated a kidnapping—she was a little fuzzy on the details. But she’d been there, had seen too many faces while vacationing in National City, and had woken with a lot of questions, and only the answers the government fed her. Her natural skepticism, her critical eye, could only stomach so much of their information.

_What eco-terrorists?_ She’d asked, to no avail.

_Why was I in California if my driver’s license says New Jersey?_ Apparently, she’d won a contest.

_Why would terrorists want to kill me?_ Because you saw their faces, you showed them how to get into Place A, and without you, they wouldn’t have gotten into Place B.

_If I can’t even remember who I am, what makes them think I’ll remember who they are?_ They’ll think you’re lying, hurt you anyway.

_Why would I help terrorists? How do I… how do I even know terrorists?_

No answer after that one.

So she’d been uprooted from a life she couldn’t remember, and inserted into a life that she desperately wanted to forget. She felt shackled, hindered, unable to fully assert whatever it was that she needed to get out of herself. Amelia felt, almost always, like she had so much potential; to be more than a fading salesperson, standing behind a counter and smiling at people beneath her, questioning why they were willing to pay a hundred dollars for six ounces of distilled scented water, when nature provided its own perfume.

_Nurture what you have!_ She wanted to scream, but the Feds told her to lay low.

In her mind, she separated the capital-F Feds from Allie. Allie wasn’t like the rest of them, and honestly, Allie was the only reason she’d not packed up and run away (Allie, and the fact that she had no back story, no information, no means of anchoring herself to any place or thing or one other than the assigned spaces the government filled for her). Allie had held her hand (metaphorically) from the very beginning. Allie had been there when she woke up in the hospital bed, had walked her through her file, had explained the entire process. It had taken hours, and she’d cried, not knowing what to do.

“Please don’t cry,” Allie had asked her, in that reserved, official manner. “We’re going to take care of you because you did the _right thing_.”

Amelia plops down into her swing, stares out at her garden, relishes the California sunlight. It’s the only thing that gets her through the days, somehow. A natural tanning bed, but she never burns—just appreciates the sun and its energy in a way no one else has ever understood. Amelia wagers she’d never get this kind of sun exposure in Jersey. She rocks herself on the wooden swing and thinks about Allie, how she’d come twice a week during that first month, then scaled it back a bit in the latter half of February, so Amelia could adjust to her new job, her incognito life, her way of being that seemed wholly disproportionate to her way of feeling. And then, something had _shifted_ , shifted so completely in middle March that Amelia could never be charged to exactly define it.

Allie started showing up twice a week again, under the guise of making headway in the case, making sure no one had contacted Amelia. And Amelia had grown so _fond_ of Allie, had researched right off the bat the exact definition of transference, wondered at, then rejected, the idea that she’d become so attracted to Allie because she provided her with the comfort Amelia craved. It went deeper, she rationalized, because they were so similar. Amelia didn’t get to be what she truly was, what she truly wanted… she had to hide, behind thick-framed glasses she didn’t need, behind a life she’d never lived, all to help with a major investigation, said to finish out within the year. It’s been four months, and she’s still in Jackson City, none the wiser to her past. And Allie… Allie once confessed that she lied to people, too. That until recently, her own mother thought she worked for a private firm in a lab, not out in the field, with guns and bombs and undercover operations, hiding witnesses and engaging in hand-to-hand combat.

Amelia had mentioned wanting to take a Jiu-jitsu or Krav Maga class after that conversation; she figured that if someone was after her, she had better know how to protect herself. Allie had shut it down immediately, frowned on her getting out much, told her it would be better to stick to the exercise DVDs from the department store, if she was feeling worked-up. Amelia had then made a sexually-veiled joke about releasing tension, and Allie had blushed to the tips of her ears.

2:56.

No sign of Allie.

Amelia looks at the tiny pot on the deck furniture, _Allison_ painted in black across the terra cotta surface, a small green ribbon wrapped around the pot’s circumference. It’s sprouting deep blue Forget-Me-Nots, a perennial bud of hearty stock for milder climates. Amelia tries not to think about the name, doesn’t want it to come across as sickly desperate.

That’s not what she intends. She’d planted that bud in February, had planned to give it to Allie ages ago, to celebrate their pseudo-three-month anniversary of not seeing her kidnapped or killed. She’s placed fresh flowers on the table for every meeting with Allie, inquired as to her favorites—then staggered back, personally offended, that Allie never thought about having a favorite flower. Amelia then made it her personal mission to send bouquets home with the Marshal every week, if not collected from her own garden, then from the shop where she buys her tools and seeds, her fertilizer and gloves. It was an _education_ , at first, one of her interests spread like the vines she prunes on her weekends.

But that little pot of Forget-Me-Nots was special. She’d finally dragged Allie’s favorite color, _blue_ , out of her during one of their visits. And the buds remained stubborn, took their time flowering, so that the pot wouldn’t be ready to present until today. It had to be today.

Amelia could tell, could read it in her face, that Allie truly appreciated the flowers. That Allie looked forward, not just to receiving them, but to the story that went along with them, the facts about how to care for them, their native climates, their frequency, their meanings. Amelia most looked forward to the hand-off, when she’d pass the vase or pot and brush Allie’s fingers in the process, then smile to herself, down at the buds, so as not to draw undue attention to the nervous thrill she’d received in her touch receptors.

It doesn’t help that maybe she’s fallen a little in love in the process, meeting up with Allie at locations prearranged, texting Allie her insecurities about his new place, so foreign in staggering degrees, at all hours. And Allie always responds patiently, in detail, as if Amelia really matters to her. As if there’s a connection beyond duty, and Amelia just can’t see it.

Which is why she’d kissed her last week.

That, and the love thing.

She knows she’s been in love before, but after the accident, she can’t recall what _type_ of love. Infatuation is different than affection, which is not the same as lust, which is wholly separate from devotion. And Amelia can’t pinpoint what she feels for Allison Smith, U.S. Marshal, but she supposes it’s a conglomeration of all positive emotions in the arena of love, of interest and excitement. Because they’re similar in enough ways to understand each other, different in many aspects so that the repartee is never boring. She’d explained the constellations for close to two hours one afternoon, showed Allie her telescope, her renderings of the stars in the sky; Amelia had taken Allie’s hand and led her to her porch to reveal her findings, only to rename the stars and their planets in her own special language later in the evening. And instead of laughing at her like any sane person, Marshal Allie Smith had smiled and squeezed her hand all the harder, had even hugged her before she left that night. Cradled her head so close, it bordered on the intimacy Amelia craved.

And that’s when Amelia fell a little in love.

And now here she is, one week after her routine meeting to check in with her assigned Marshal. One week after they’d had glorious sex, against the wall and on the couch and in her bed, all because she’d let herself get wrapped up in her protector. She can’t recall anything about her life in New Jersey, can’t distinguish past memories from present experiences; sometimes, she feels like she’s learning something completely original, so new that she’s got to tell someone. That someone is usually Allie, has been Allie, over the drudgery that the past few weeks have comprised.

And now that she’s gone and screwed herself by screwing Allie, she’ll probably get some no-nothing government Joe Blow, some underling who has no investment in her case. She’ll probably lose everything that she’s built so far, even if what she’s built has been beautiful, exquisite, adventurous… yet wholly unstable.

There’s nothing solid in her life anymore. She wonders if there ever was.

Amelia can hear the shifting, even from her backyard, through meters of dry wall and insulation and wood, of bodies in a car. The slam of the door. The feet shuffling, sturdy leather against a car interior, and then a lighter material… canvas, perhaps? There’s been many little changes in her senses she’s had to learn to cope with since the accident, which had seriously compromised her equilibrium.

Amelia hears the doorbell and gets anxious, only slightly, because something tells her it’s not Allie this time. That whoever’s come in for the weekly check—whether at her home or a random Chipotle or a bookstore or a gas station—will never be the same as the woman she’s fallen in love with.

She rises regretfully, plucks the black-framed glasses from their perch on the kitchen table and plants them firmly on her nose, then makes her way to the front door and the two heartbeats galloping rapidly behind the wood. Amelia breathes deeply, tries to compose herself and tone down the sensation—like Allie’s taught her— before she places her hand on the doorknob. She opens it to find Allie before her, a small half-grin that pinned to her face like an innocuous save-the-date. Like a warning of an event to come, not quite the main action.

Or… possibly the result of an event, a fight, a _something_ , that’s already befallen.

Allie sports a blackish shiner on her left eye, has cuts and scrapes running the length of her forearm. The grin is small, because if she smiles any wider, she’ll split the crusty scab that’s congealed in the first stages of healing, sickly flecks of built-up skin covering the wound.

“Allie! What’s happened to you?” she reaches instinctively out to comfort her, to cradle her broken face, but Allie dismisses her with a headshake.

“It’s fine. I’m… I’m okay.”

But everything’s not okay, because it’s different this time.

Because… Allie’s brought someone with her.

Beside her stands a blonde woman, young-ish, in a prim cardigan with black-framed glasses similar to her own. Amelia has no idea why she recognizes this woman… wonders if it’s an acquaintance from before. But she can deal with her troubles later, because Allison’s standing on the other side of her door, injured, and all Amelia desires is to pull her close and whisper the pain away.

But there’s a lot happening in the brief spell at the door—Amelia surveying Allie, the blonde woman reaching for Amelia, as if she has any right (they’ve never met before, have they?)—and Allie, standing off to the side, on the verge of tears for the entire affair.

“Oh my god, it’s true,” the woman says, reaching out to lay hands on Amelia’s forearm. She shies away from the touch, wondering if Allie has betrayed her in some fashion.

“Allison…” she asks, clutching the door knob so hard she feels it wilt under her pressure, just like the flowers unable to withstand a blazing summer sun. “What is this?”

“My name’s not Allison… nor Allie,” Allie—or _not_ Allie says, her eyes flicking between the blonde girl and Amelia, gauging the reactions all the while. “I’m Alex, and this is Kara, and we really need to talk.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's everyone. Here, have some angst.

“I don’t understand,” Amelia says, her eyes floating between the women, anxiety elevated to loftier heights than she previously believed possible. “Your name is not… It’s Alex? What’s your surname?”

“Danvers,” Alex answers. “And this is my sister, Kara Danvers.”

“Kara,” Amelia says, and a piercing pain lights its way across her frontal lobe, like a hot poker has just been driven through her temple. “K-Kara?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Kara tells her, as if that’s supposed to lesson the splitting agony in her skull, streaking through her mind like a fiery comet.

“I’m sorry,” Amelia says, and as much as she wants to talk this over with Allie— _Alex_ , she mentally corrects, she really needs to go take some medicine. “Can you excuse me, just for a moment?”

“What’s wrong?” Allie— _damn_ , Alex, asks.

“My head… hurts,” Amelia confesses.

“Do you think Ken’s accounted for deterioration?” Kara asks Alex.

“He said the chip would be fine for six months, and I double checked with the nurses. But I… I dialed back her cuff last week.”

“Who is Ken?” Amelia asks, shaking her head over the incomprehensible back and forth between the Marshal and her _sister_. “And what chip?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alex advises, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a tiny bottle. “You’ve got a headache?”

“Yes… how did you—”

“Can we come in? Sit down for a while?” Alex requests, and she’s never had to make the request before. Amelia usually just opens the door and Alex falls into step beside her, picking up on their previous week’s chat as if the woman came home to her every day.

It’s… probably not the best to pick up where they left off last week, seeing all the bruises on Alex’s body. Plus there’s mystery girl Kara Danvers, wet-eyed and smiling, bright like a summer daisy.

“I can hardly refuse a U.S. Marshal,” Amelia mutters, stepping aside to allow them entrance.

She leads them down the hall from her front door to her kitchen at the back of the house, the glass door left ajar leading to her garden outside, the pitcher of lemonade condensating on the table.

“Can I get you two something to drink? Allie, do you want your—oh, my apologies,” Amelia corrects, moving on autopilot around the kitchen, retrieving glasses from cabinets as she places her fingers to rub against her temple.

The pain is still there, has been right below the surface all week, but seeing these two women together has suddenly compounded the pressure and she can’t ignore it anymore, needs to find something to lessen it. She’s never had a headache before, never really felt _pain_. Even when pruning shears slipped against her skin they never cut deep; or when she’d been knocked to the ground by one of her coworkers who’d tripped her up as they were arranging a new display, she’d never cried out.

There was always a noted discomfort, but never _pain._

She sets the glass of lemonade down in front of Allie— _Alex Alex Alex_ —and turns to Kara.

“And what can I get you, Little One?”

Her head explodes like a tripped landmine. Fireworks burst around the edge of her vision and she clutches her skull, cringes, wonders if this is a migraine or if something is grievously wrong, if the accident had some lingering effects, lying dormant until she’d been confronted with—

“K-Kara?” Amelia asks again, now clutching the back of her kitchen chair so hard she feels the wood splinter a little beneath her fingers.

“Here, take these,” Allie—Alex says, pushing a tiny bottle of medication across the table. “Two of them. It should… ease some of pain.”

“What are these tablets?” Amelia asks. “Are these from your physicians, back in National City?”

“Yes, they’re special for your case. Go on,” Alex encourages her, standing to place a warm hand against her shoulder. Amelia studies the bottle and Alex shifts, crosses to fill an extra glass that’s resting on the counter with water from the tap. The Marshal returns to the table and treads carefully, as if dancing on glass, and hands the water to Amelia with a reassuring nod.

“Thank you,” Amelia says, and places two pills on her tongue.

Kara watches their movements and Amelia feels judged, feels—wholly out of her depth. She’s never had to take medication before, never had anyone else here while Allie— _Alex_ was here. She swallows an inelegant mouthful of water and medicated capsules and coughs, hacks a little against the feeling of a stone in her throat. She rights herself, breathes deeply, folds her hands before her on the table. It feels like they’re setting up for some high-stakes negotiation, but Amelia has no idea what it is they’ve come to bargain for.

“It’ll kick in in a minute,” Alex says, returning to her seat at the table. She shifts closer to Amelia, and it takes some significant willpower not to reach out and grab Alex’s hand, not to want her to just _simplify_ everything.

“Ast—Amelia,” Alex begins, pursing her lips. “There’s no easy way to start this, so I guess we just have to dive in.”

“Right,” Kara nods beside her. The girl removes her glasses and folds them up on the table, then reaches out to take Amelia’s hand. Amelia draws back, and the wounded expression on Kara’s face hurts her more than it should. Amelia doesn’t _understand_ , doesn’t get why this young woman would want to provide comfort to someone she’s never met before.

“Yeah, well…” Kara continues, trying not to look shaken. She does not succeed. “Like we said, I’m Kara, and I’m… I’m your niece,” she shrugs. “And you don’t remember that, but, Alex and I, we think you will soon. We want to help you.”

“My… niece?” Amelia asks, tilting her head to look for any resemblance, any clue that will jumpstart the dead engine in her brain back to recognition. “Wait, if I’m your aunt,” she surveys Kara once more, but the pistons in her head seem to be sparking, groaning, pumping out a connection that makes her feel like vomiting. “And…” She turns to look at Alex, feels something terrible slam inside of her, “…you’re her _sister_?” Amelia spats the accusation. “What does that make us?!”

“Nothing!” Alex hurries to correct. “Kara’s my _foster_ sister—my family took Kara in when she was twelve. She didn’t know she had any family left until you showed up.”

“So we are not related?” Amelia asks immediately, because as confusing and inexplicable as her life has become, she cannot possibly cope with accidental incest, too.

“No. Not by blood, anyway.”

“Thank god,” Amelia says, reaching out for Alex’s hand.

She props her opposite elbow up on the table and puts her forehead in her palm, takes a moment to decompress. When she drops her hand from her forehead she doesn’t release Alex, and Kara’s eagle-eye doesn’t stop focusing on that contact, making Amelia feel squeamish and raw. Like Kara could see right through her.

“Why would that matter?” Kara asks.

“Not now, Kara,” Alex says. “Let’s just… we’ve got to break this ice somehow.” Alex turns her chair so that she’s facing Amelia head-on, takes Amelia’s now shaking hand in both of hers and squeezes, keeps eye contact, but the posturing feels hollow. No amount of comforting gestures can prepare Amelia for whatever blow Alex is preparing to deliver.

“You have to let me get all of this out before you start asking questions, okay?”

Amelia nods, and casts a critical look at Kara across the table. Kara stares back, her breathing shallow, her pupils bouncing between Alex and Amelia, and then her brow furrows, pinched as if she’s puzzling something out for herself.

“Go on,” Amelia says, returning her attention to Alex.

“My name is Alex Danvers, not Allison Smith. I am not a U.S. Marshal, but I do work for the government, and it has always been my job, it still _is_ my job, to keep you safe. You need to remember that, alright? That we’ll keep you safe.”

“Yes?” Amelia breathes, clutches Alex’s hands in hers.

“Easy there, you’ll break my fingers,” Alex reprimands, but doesn’t pull her hand away. “And… I guess that’s as good a segue as any. First off, your name is not Amelia Inzelli.”

“Right, it’s ‘Amy Johnson’.”

“No, that’s not it either,” Alex corrects, heaving a heavy sigh. “Your name is Astra In-ze.”

“Astra In-ze?”

“Yes.”

Amelia smiles sadly through her worry, because Alex is looking at her so hopefully, and the pain in her head is lessening by the second. “Oh, Alex,” she says, reaching out to carefully cup her scraped chin. She gingerly brushes her thumb over a long scratch across Alex’s nose, then strokes her cheek, curls a dangling lock of hair behind her ear. “You called me that when—I believed you wanted to be with someone else.”

“I messed up,” Alex admits, quiet and cautious beneath her touch.

“What’s going on here?” Kara questions, and it’s no longer the sunny disposition first presented across the threshold of Amelia’s house. Kara’s jaw clenches and her expression intensifies, unwavering in its scrutiny.

“Kara, wait a second—”

“What’s going on with you two?”

“Another time,” Alex cuts. “We have to tell her first.”

“Why is she looking at you like that?” Kara doesn’t let it drop, and boy does Amelia wish she would. Wishes she could blot whatever expression she’s displaying into obscurity, erase it from the canvas and start again, blank and unreadable.

Just like her life has been for the past four months.

Amelia... no, _Astra_ is drawing what momentary comfort she can from the one source that grounds her, and her supposed niece is looking at her like she’s turned the world on its ear, like she’s betrayed her when she doesn’t even _know_ her.

“Your name is Astra In-ze,” Alex ignores her sister. “You were the General of an alien army, fighting against my organization. Fighting against Kara. Kara is… Supergirl,” Alex blinks, and Astra can see the tears coming, even as her own tears of confusion well and fall. “You wanted to stop, and you did. You came to us, worked out a deal. Gave us all the information you could, and escaped from the remaining officers in charge of your forces. In return, we hid you, but because of the advanced technologies, we had to take desperate measures.”

“…what kind of measures?” Amelia, no, _Astra_ asks.

“In your forces were aliens, Astra. Aliens with abilities far beyond human power,” Alex explains. “Your telepaths were of particular concern, the aliens who could read minds. We had to wipe it. Everything, in case they ever found you. Your past, us, even the knowledge that you were anything other than human.”

“I’m… I’m not human?” Amelia gasps, because it all certainly makes more sense now, even if it is rather staggering to absorb.

“No,” Alex shakes her head. “You and Kara are Kryptonians, from the planet Krypton. And now… I’m pretty sure you two are the only ones left of your race. Well, you two and Kara’s cousin.”

Astra tightens her fingers so swiftly Alex yanks away from the touch, curses from the pressure.

“I have a son?!” Astra asks, bolting up with her knees slightly bent, as if she’s ready to run.

“No, it’s from the other side of the family,” Kara mutters from her seat.

“This is… insanity,” Amelia-Astra, whoever she is now, says. She waves her hands before her and shakes her head, wondering if she twitches long enough that she’ll be able to wipe the words out of the air.

“Believe me, I know how crazy it sounds,” Kara says gently. “I just found out you were alive two days ago, and now,” Kara’s tone drops, and a calculating brow cocks heavenward. She glowers at her sister: “I’m beginning to see why.”

“Kara, it’s not what you think,” Alex angrily hoists herself up from her spot at the table, knocking the chair down in her haste. She places her hands on her hips, the utility belt draped below her waist seeming to weigh her down more than usual. She looks so tired, and Kara’s perfect as a picture, uninjured, almost smug, ready for another fight.

“This is totally messed up,” Kara snaps at her. “Alex, I trusted you. _She_ trusted you. How could you take advantage of her that way?”

“If anyone took advantage, it wasn’t Allison,” Amelia chimes in. “Alex, I mean. And I don’t… I don’t think what you’re saying can be true. You expect me to believe I’m not human? That I know anything about… guns or armies or fighting?”

“Kara,” Alex grits through clenched teeth. “Can we have the room?”

“Why, so you can make out with my _aunt_? Remember I can see through walls!”

“That’s enough,” Alex snaps. “First off, Astra, you know all of those things. And we’re going to work to get it back for you. And Kara… I didn’t mean for this to happen. For her to be gone as long as it took to get rid of the rest of Fort Rozz. And somewhere along the way—”

“No,” Kara says, raising a hand. She looks crushed. “I can’t… I can’t listen to this right now. I’m going out to the car. Call me when she starts choking you again.”

“Kara,” Amelia moves toward the retreating blonde, the urge to comfort her distressed relation overwhelming despite her lost memory. “I’m sorry, I can—”

“Let her go,” Alex catches Amelia… Astra, on the shoulder. “I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

“Alex, don’t you dare hurt her again,” Kara says from her spot at the entrance of the hallway. She’s peeking out from the corner like a child caught witnessing something they shouldn’t, wide-eyed and uncomprehending. "I know Hank said he did it, but you had the sword strapped-"

“Kara, you know… everything I do, I do to protect you. I could never hurt her,” Alex says. She doesn’t stop looking at Kara, but she does move to stand beside a shaky Amelia… dammit, _Astra_.

She’s going to have to get used to calling herself that.

“I feel like this is the one thing I can’t trust you with,” Kara charges her sister—and she, too, is now on the verge of tears. “But how do I know you two won’t go at it again? You never got along before, how can I even walk out of this room without feeling guilty?”

“Because,” Alex takes Astra’s hand in her own, plants her feet to solidly face her sister. And Astra can see the agent in her, the stalwart, fixed assertion of one committed to their cause… committed to a person, even. “I won’t go after her, because she’s not up for defending herself right now. And she won’t come after me, no matter what I tell her, because…” Astra feels Alex’s fingers threaded in her own, hears the other woman’s pulse pounding in her ears. It’s reassuring and fearsome and it makes her want to hold Alex close.

“… because, she loves me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GET IT?!?!? BECAUSE SHE'S IN SHE LOVES ME!?!?!??!
> 
> Hahahahahahahahahahahahhahahhahaha. *whispers* Please like me...


	3. Chapter 3

“I do,” Amelia… no, Astra says, after Kara’s pivoted morosely and retreated down the hall, her tail between her legs and head hung low. “I never told you but, I… do. Love you.”

“I know,” Allie— _by Rao_ — ** _Alex_** says.

“I…” Astra begins, then gets caught up on the thought. “Who is Rao?”

“I think it’s a god? The god on Krypton,” Alex replies.

“That would explain why I keep swearing by him,” Astra murmurs, marveling at a notion buried so deeply in her subconscious. “What is it you must tell me?”

“I… I think it would be easier to show you.”

“Can we go outside?” Astra requests. If she can’t be strong, at least she can draw comfort from her sun. “It’s beautiful today.”

“The light will bend the image,” Alex quashes her request. “It would be better if you could pull the blinds.” Alex moves toward the kitchen table and places a slim plastic device in the middle: it’s grey, triangular, intriguing.

“What is that?” Astra asks, as she moves to push the door to. She tugs the blinds down on all the windows and moves closer to Alex, then reaches out to touch her waist on instinct.

“Don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” Alex pleads, turning her attention to the device on the table.

“Why?” Astra questions, standing her ground, demanding an answer.

Instead of withdrawing, Astra refuses to remove her hand from the cotton covering Alex’s waist. She can almost feel the individual fibers brushing against her touch receptors, zinging sensations along the ridges of her fingerprints. Something is changing, shifting on a cellular level within her. She’s been defiant before, but now it’s compelling, demanding. Astra wants Alex and she wants answers in equal measure, and for some reason Kara and Alex make it seem as though the two are mutually exclusive. That one prohibits the possession of the other.

“This is a hologram confessional,” Alex blunders on, won’t turn to Astra’s sentinel stance at her side.

Alex presses buttons frantically, stares at the little blue light as it blinks to life amidst the cream-colored linoleum and white-washed cabinets, the flamingo-pink Chrysanthemums, the highlighter yellow of the lemonade in the clear pitcher, and the black and navy fabrics, the color of bruises and hurt that Alex always wears.

“Whose confession?”

“Yours,” Alex says, reaching out, then pausing, before pressing one final button. “Astra…”

“Yes?” Astra returns.

Alex is a hairsbreadth from a ledge, and if Astra so much as breathes hard enough Alex is sure to topple over, _kersplat_ on the pavement stories and miles and leagues below. Alex’s expression pinches inward uncomfortably, and she looks at Astra like she’s falling, falling with nothing to hold onto.

But instead of resigning herself to the descent, Alex acts: she takes Astra’s hand and leads her outside anyway, shuts the door on the darkened, gloomy kitchen and abandons every question she’s posited, every half answer she can’t formulate due to regulation or decency. Her black boots find the large paving stones Astra had installed all by her lonesome, those chiseled pieces of rock that had taken two strapping male clerks and a dolly to load into the trunk of her small, government issued sedan. But Astra had easily lifted two, one in each hand, and had set to laying a path of stepping-stones through her garden.

They stand under the arbor with the yellow Lady Banks and the sun tickles Astra’s skin. Alex’s heart is thudding fast, the lines in her face grimmer with the additional bruising. Alex removes Astra’s glasses and shoves them into the recesses of one of her bottomless pockets, grabs Astra by the waist and tangles a hand in her hair.

“I want to do this one last time before you watch that,” she mumbles lowly.

The scent of florals and summer and _Alex_ is overwhelming, inundating Astra’s olfactory region and sending her head swimming. It’s like that afternoon Alex had taken her for frozen yogurt for the first time. She can’t recall ever having eaten it before: vanilla ice cream. Chopped strawberries. Multi-colored sprinkles. There’s a twinge of pain at the back of her head, like her first brain freeze that day. Now, it’s either Alex’s grip or something much, much deeper.

“I don’t think you’ll want me anymore once you see it,” Alex nearly whimpers, too sad for such a gorgeous day. “But I can’t give you up without a fight.”

_FIGHT._

Alex closes the distance between them and Astra knows the kiss feels like another injury. Even the sliding movement of their lips against each other’s is unnecessary pressure on Alex's preexisting wounds. Astra has her arms resting gently against Alex’s biceps, but if the bruising on her face and forearms is any indication, Alex is probably just as weathered beneath her clothing.

But Alex is kissing her like she’s stronger than any injury her fragile human body could sustain. Even looking like she’s walked to hell and back, Alex kneads her hands in Astra’s hair and massages her lips to serenity; as if under this flowering arbor, in Alex’s arms, with the sun shining relentlessly down on the pair of them, some discomfort as innocuous as _pain_ has no bearing on their feeling. But even as Astra feels a tongue lick smoothly over her lip, the word _ENEMY_ flashes to the fore, just as the pain in her frontal lobe had when she’d heard the name _Kara_ for the very first time.

Astra breaks their kiss and Alex pants against her cheek, runs her trembling, nicked up fingers through Astra’s hair.

“Thank you… thank you for that,” Alex murmurs.

There’s another twinge of pain at the base of her head, something discomfiting and bothersome. She can’t outrun it: almost like her shoes are stuck to the ground, as if someone’s spread tar over her only avenue of retreat. She can untie her boots and leave the shoes, flounder through the muck towards escape, her feet cracking and bleeding due to her haste.

_Retreat—fall back!_

_FIGHT._

_A planet burning red and sand up to her knees—she scrambles through it, weighted down with a vest, a gun at her hip, explosives at her fingertips._

_FIGHT._

_Fall back! Fall back!_

_A supernova explodes overhead and rattles her spine, tosses her to the ground so that she takes two nostrils full of ruby sand. The bright sears her skin; flesh-burned compatriots scream their agony behind her._

Astra returns from memory—was it a memory? a lucid nightmare?—to the arbor, where Alex observes her hesitation.

“You are… welcome, Al—” she recalls being this close to Alex, in a sunny brick room, with her hand on Alex’s body, squeezing to restrain her. To _strangle_ her.

“…Agent Danvers?”

Alex closes her eyes in defeat as the penny drops; she steps back, bows her head once, and releases Astra for the last time.

“Let’s see about filling in those blank spaces.”

Alex leaves Astra beneath the arbor and heads back into the house. Astra remains, thinks about that kiss… how she’d set her lips against Alex’s neck last week, how her fingers had curled around the other woman’s throat, so tight the skin bulged out, like vines overflowing from a pot too small, before she could successfully transplant the flower to a bed where it could thrive.

Something has been cut short.

Astra thinks of fingers around a neck and being choked to death. Thinks of being unable to breathe, of blood filling her lungs, asphyxiating on her own—

“Astra?” Alex calls from the sliding door.

“Yes I… I’ll be in shortly.”

She gazes at the sun and wonders at the golden light, wonders what it means for the twinges in her head… the pills she took, how they’re breaking something away. It’s too much to negotiate, her fragile love and her old life, vivid, terrible memories returning where she feels animosity and hate and self-loathing so acute it makes her want to curl in on herself and never emerge. The flowers provide little comfort as she stalks inside, preparing to hear her confessional.

“How does this function?” she asks, heading straight for the table. She doesn’t spare Alex a second glance.

“Press your thumb there,” Alex says, reaching for her hand.

“I see, I can manage,” Astra reacts, moving before Alex can touch her again. “And now?”

Astra does not respond to the grimace on Alex’s face.

“State your name,” Alex says.

And something true and resilient comes back to her, trips over her tongue as if it had always been waiting for release: “Astra In-ze, First Daughter of the House of In-ze, Arclominian of the First Order.”

Her likeness sprouts from the triangular device in a starburst of light and shape, a firm, unflinching expression set in her hologram’s furrowed brow, her clenched jaw. She looks older in the hologram than she had this very morning when she looked in the mirror, even though this was recorded months ago, if Agent Danvers—Alex, is telling the truth.

She hears a disembodied voice that sounds suspiciously like said agent come through the recording.

“State your name for the record,” the voice begins.

“General Astra In-ze, First Daughter of the House of In-ze, Arclominian of the First Order,” the torso before her says.

“You may proceed with your statement of consent.”

“I, General Astra In-ze, do hereby surrender my person to the DEO, and all abilities and memories with which I am endowed, I likewise relinquish.”

“You understand that you will undergo a complete memory wipe. Do you consent?”

“As opposed to execution?” the hologram snaps.

The Astra sitting at the table stiffens at the word spat from the hologram, like verbal acid expectorated against her captors. Apparently a death threat was issued several months ago; now, she cannot recall.

“Yes,” the hologram is despondent, dips its head in surrender.

“Now,” Alex’s voice is shaky on the other side, but the corporeal Alex, the one who’d just kissed her, stands and moves beyond the hologram. She waves her hand and the recording pauses.

“This will take a while, and I need to go check on Kara,” she says tiredly.

Astra merely nods.

“Will you be okay while I’m gone?”

“I have a feeling I’m not going to want you here,” Astra answers.

“Yeah, I… I’ll go. But we’ll be right outside,” Alex pauses at the door to the kitchen, wiggles her jaw uncertainly. The woman seems to be searching for spoken indulgences or reassurances—but they have lost all significance. “We still want you safe, Astra.”

“What is safety if I have nothing to protect?” Astra questions.

“I’ll be outside,” Alex repeats, and waves a hand as the recording starts back up.

Astra hears a request coming from Alex’s disembodied voice on the recording: “Now, please walk us through everything with Myriad, and the terms of your consented detention.”

“Apparently, you get everything I know,” the hologram huffs at the voice out of sight. “And then I get a sword to the chest, an arduous and risky healing process, and then another kind of death altogether. Anything else?”

Astra hears Alex sigh off-camera.

“In detail, Astra. We have to have it for the records, should something go—”

“You mean if I end up brain dead?”

“General—”

“Fine. Myriad. Let us begin.”

And so General Astra In-ze (formerly Amelia Inzelli) sits in her kitchen alone, with a twinge at the back of her head, and listens to her likeness tell the whole damning story of her surrender, her death, and the loss of every memory she ever had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't planned on updating this today, but of course the next chapter got too long, which forced me to split it up. I love how I set a three chapter outline, and it somehow takes an extra 7k words to get there. Oh well... more for you guys, I guess?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FLASHBACK

General Astra hates the moist, close feeling of the human headquarters. The DEO is partially underground in this perplexing series of caves, with passages labyrinthine and unnavigable. Even while subterranean, she can hear the shuffling of captured combatants, stored away in hall upon hall of cells, tucked underneath the ground like an enormous honeycomb, where the tiny humans and their annoying Kryptonite stingers drift by periodically to tend to their larvae, their pollen, their poisonous nectar.

Kara is several rooms over, that leech of an alien still burrowed deeply in her chest, sucking her soul away with its telepathic illusion. Astra can see the confusion through the walls, though her vision is less sharp with the shackles. And that confounding woman, Agent Danvers, has consented to retrieving Kara from the world of pseudo-Krypton. Astra does not have much hope for this plan; the human female convulsed for much too long earlier. And if Agent Danvers doesn’t pull Kara out, Astra likely won’t escape this compound alive. There’s more Kryptonite here than she’s even seen, stored and stocked and stolen from places unearthly, all to combat her forces. To cripple her soldiers. To incapacitate _her_.

She yanks at the green-glowing shackles on her wrists and they don’t budge.

Astra focuses on Kara, the reason she’s here. Kara, her reason for fighting in the first place.

_What do I care of prison, we are dying, Alura! Kara, is DYING!_

And there Kara Zor-El lay, dying _because_ of her, because of Astra’s blind devotion to her cause. The one life she swore to preserve, above all others—

Astra wishes to rage. To take flight and circle the planet, fly so high the ice crystals form on her eyelashes, match the frigid temperatures of her breath. Float away and freeze, return to the nothingness of the Phantom Zone, of deep, endless space, back to the vacuum of torture where she can’t hurt Kara ever again.

Because that’s all she deserves.

She sinks to the floor in the tiny office where Agent Danvers had deposited her when they’d first arrived. The young DEO agent had slapped the Kryptonite shackles on her hands and blindfolded her, wrapped her up in some rancid human clothing and instructed her to keep her head down; thankfully, the DEO had been in utter disarray upon their arrival, due to Supergirl’s indisposition. But it’s been hours now, and those tense young men won’t stop hovering over Kara; the older male who smells suspiciously of off-planet residue barks orders to technicians and the like, though his face folds with concern as Agent Danvers places the helmet overhead, determined to go under.

Astra closes her eyes and prays to Rao for the first time since her imprisonment in Fort Rozz. As a soldier, much younger, much less jaded, she’d believed in cosmic influence, in a greater presence. Even now, she wants to believe in something greater than herself, though she can’t determine whether she wishes to exercise faith because she truly believes, or whether she seeks forgiveness from something bigger than she is because she can no longer forgive herself. Who would dare absolve her of every wrong she’s performed that has led to her niece’s life hanging in the fragile balance? What higher power would deem her worthy of a second chance?

Just because she seeks repentance does not mean she deserves it.

Tense hours pass but Kara lives, rises, distressed and murderous. Astra paces the small office and waits, waits as she was told, because a soldier follows orders. Because everything is out of her hands now.

Agent Danvers slips in shortly after Kara’s resurrection.

“She’ll be alright,” Agent Danvers says. “She’s… she’s pissed. She’s going after your husband.”

“Good,” Astra says, staring down at her boots. “She’s entitled to that revenge.”

“Thank you, for coming to me,” Agent Danvers says, but it’s more obligatory gratitude than sincerity. The woman might be a professional, but she is clearly shaken. “We’d have never gotten her back if not for you.”

“You would have never lost her in the first place, if not for me,” Astra counters. “I never intended to harm Kara. She is everything to me.”

“Then you know what you should do,” Agent Danvers answers.

Astra nods, resolved, then takes a seat at the small desk in the room, Agent Danvers pulling up a chair to the other side of the table.

“What do you need to know?” Astra asks. “You must understand that you do not have much time.”

“Then we’ll figure something out. Tell me everything you can,” Danvers answers.

“Yes,” Astra mumbles, her shackled hands heavier now than they’ve ever been before. “Then we must begin with Myriad.”

 

* * *

 

 

“… that could take some time to divert your efforts,” Agent Danvers finishes. “Months, maybe a year if it all goes to hell.”

“It is a military operation. You certainly did not expect a simple fight?” Astra replies.

“No, but… you realize we can’t let you go. And if they’re as close to finding the DEO as you say, you’re a liability to us. Your telepaths will know what you’ve revealed. They’ll alter tactics if they know you’ve supplied us with information." The woman is calm, rational, despite the harrowing ordeal she's just experienced. If Astra didn't feel like her life was crumbling around her, she'd be impressed with Agent Danvers's reasoning: "And if that happens, your surrender—all this information you’ve just given me—it will be for nothing.”

“It would be better if I were—what is your human phrase?— _out of the picture_ completely,” Astra offers, recalling that frozen feeling of nothing. Fort Rozz, ten years… endless, lovely darkness. “Sometimes soldiers are expendable.”

“Hey,” Agent Danvers cuts, her serious expression shrinking over piqued, Elven features. “Kara would want to know you saved her.”

“ _You_ are Kara’s hero. Do not allow her false hope concerning my redemption,” Astra corrects. “It is cruelty, to offer hope where there is none. I have given you our plans, the keys to humanity’s salvation. It is now up to you to use that information as you see fit.”

“I can’t put you away in a cell and risk what you’ve told me,” Alex reasserts. “They’ll come for you, their general. And then they’ll read you, and both of us will be in trouble.”

Astra takes a deep breath, closes her eyes... resigns herself to oblivion.

“I understand,” she says, sitting taller in her tiny metal chair, rough-hewn, shoddy human craftsmanship. It needles her, an impending demise on a primitive planet. “I only ask that the execution be quick. Grant me a soldier’s death, not that… that stream of fire injected in my veins again.”

Agent Danvers sits back in her chair, props one black booted foot atop her opposite knee. She is silent, and Astra is thankful that the soldier considers her request, thinks perhaps there is honor in some of these humans after all.

“I have an idea, but you might not like it.”

“Concerning my execution? Please do not toy with me, Agent Danvers.”

“We wouldn’t have to kill you, but we could hide you.”

“Hide me?” Astra perks at the suggestion. “You expect my forces not to comb every inch of this floating rock to exact retribution when they discover I have given you information?”

“They can’t find anything if they think you’re dead,” Agent Danvers replies.

Astra’s brow knits together in confusion. “You would have me… have me fake my death?”

“We can arrange it so it’s public. You said you had to place your boxes at the satellite receptors while the storm is still brewing, so it needs to be quick. Tonight, even,” Alex explains. “So that the only people who know you’ve given up this information are me and Director Henshaw. He’s a telepath himself. He would find out eventually.”

“I knew he smelled of Martian dust,” Astra says, absorbing the proposition. “But the problem remains: telepaths can hear thoughts. Mine will constantly wander to Kara, to Myriad, to the forces fighting. Even if you hide me away from the DEO, in plain sight, our teams will eventually pick up on my brain waves.”

“What if you didn’t know anything about it?” Alex asks, leaning forward, her foot falling to the floor beneath her. She scoots the chair closer to the table and extends her hands, as if physically presenting an object-- _a box or a sphere of second chances--_ to Astra. “What if we took away your memories—your past, your troops, your training—so you would never be in danger of letting your mind wander?”

“And how do you propose to—ah, the Martian,” Astra nods, yet she knows of the power Martians possess in this solar system. She hesitates. “I could end up with no brain power whatsoever.”

“Director Henshaw is reluctant to use his powers, but I don’t think they will have the same effect on a Kryptonian as they do on a human. Even if he hits you hard with a memory wipe, we’ll stick you in the sun bed directly afterward; your cells will regenerate and heal. It’s your best option.”

“It’s either wipe my memory or die,” Astra gripes. “Neither option is preferable; and with your way, I lose the reason I even consent to this torture. I’ll have no memory of Kara!”

“We’ll come back for you once it’s over,” Agent Danvers counters. “And Kara will be there.”

“I won’t _remember_ her.”

“We’ll help you with that. You’ll remember eventually, if you stay in the sun long enough. Your constitution will rebuild whatever it is in your brain that Henshaw inhibits.”

“’Whatever it is’,” Astra scoffs. “How specific.”

Agent Danvers glares at her from across the table.

“We’ll have to implant Kryptonite in your system—”

“No, not again,” Astra objects. “I cannot undergo that—”

“Unless you’d like to wake up, thinking you’re a human, and then suddenly start flying? Crush your car door? Astra, you have to make concessions with this!”

“Is my LIFE not concession enough?!” Astra seethes, pounding her bound hands on the table before her.

Agent Danvers stands her ground.

“I’m trying to keep Kara’s only blood alive! My hands are as tied as yours, General!” Alex raises her voice but doesn't shout, stands so quickly that the seat flies back and hits the wall. The woman breathes raggedly, cradles her chest, and moves to the far corner of the room. “Sometimes the worst option is the only option,” she mumbles toward the floor. “And the less people who know about this, the better. Kara will think you’re gone, and besides, she's got the biggest target on her back. If they capture her, she’ll be firm in her belief of your death. No one can read Henshaw’s mind.”

“But that leaves you, does it not?” Astra brings her shackled hands up to her head, rests it on the sickly green bar between her wrists while the implications of this deal unfurl like ribbon before her, flashy promises that really don’t hold anything together. “You would be the only person to know my whereabouts. My life, in your hands.”

“This way you see Kara again,” Agent Danvers reiterates the end goal. “Not right away, not until Myriad has been halted, your forces contained. It will take a while.”

“But you believe you can do it?”

“With the information you’ve given me? I know I can.”

“Remember what I said about false hope, Agent Danvers,” Astra says. She squints and tries to stare through the walls, to see Kara one last time, but the Kryptonite around her wrists, coupled with the stress of the ordeal, hampers her abilities. “I never assumed you were cruel.”

Agent Danvers doesn’t respond. She checks her left arm, the device with the blinking time diverting her attention.

“You said the boxes were being placed at midnight, correct?”

“We’re to meet at 2200 to finalize assignments,” Astra says. “If Kara does not get to my—to Non first.”

“I can give you half an hour to make your decision. Time’s precious, and we’d have to brainstorm a really convincing death for you.”

“Why not run me through with one of your green trinkets?” Astra mocks, but Alex’s widening eyes cause her to wonder if the woman took her suggestions seriously. “I was being facetious, Agent Danvers.”

“I’ve been doing tests on Kara since she first came here. Longer, actually,” Agent Danvers says, moving slowly toward Astra at the table. “I know how fast you heal. If it’s quick, through and through… I could sever an aorta but if I get it back in the lead casing in enough time, your powers would—”

“Just what is this ‘it’ you are referring to?” Astra questions skeptically.

“A Kryptonite sword.”

“No,” Astra’s stomach drops, like the first few times she swooped into flight on this planet. It’s a disorienting sensation, heavy in the wrong part of her body.

“Astra, I think this could work. You can’t ask for a more convincing death scene.”

“I am a General, not an actress.”

“Then it’s a good thing none of it’s fake,” Agent Danvers protests. “It’s going to hurt like _hell_. And you’ll probably black out; your body might even shut down. But the key is the quickness of the delivery. I mean… well, how do you go for a kill in hand-to-hand combat?”

“Are there weapons involved?” Astra asks, drained from the Kryptonite.

“Blades,” Agent Danvers answers.

“Depends on the species, but typically, through the ribs, and rotate the blade, to cause the most damage internally. That is, if you can only land a single stab wound to the torso.”

“I won’t rotate the blade,” Alex says seriously. "And I can deliver a convincing enough kill shot, for our allies, for security tape. I can make it look real."

“Of course you will,” Astra shakes her head, dejected that everything, all that she’s fought to save, has come down to a saber splitting her chest wide.

“I saw Krypton,” Agent Danvers moves closer, but Astra doesn’t look up. “In the Black Mercy illusion, I was there. It was… beautiful. I get why you loved it so much.”

“No. Do not talk of things you do not understand,” Astra requests, her voice scratchy… Kryptonite, despair, she’s unsure which has more influence over her.

“Kara was so happy there. It was her perfect world,” Agent Danvers continues. “I saw your sister.”

“Desist—”

“I know she wasn’t real, but Kara loved her so much. Loves you both so much—”

Astra rises from the chair, prepared to end the Agent’s incessant pushing. But the Kryptonite weakens her, strains against her limbs, so instead Astra tries to back away. She gets as far as the wall before she realizes the hopelessness of the situation: this is torture of another kind, slow, onerous, accusation after accusation heaped before her, testament to her failures.

“If you won’t do it to save your life, at least do it so Kara has a chance of keeping you around,” Agent Danvers closes in on her now, moves her hands down toward the shackles wrapped round her wrists.

“Why would you do this?” Astra asks her, refusing to let her tears fall. “You would be completely responsible for me.”

“I’m responsible for Kara, and the things that make her happy. _You_ could make her happy. A… rehabilitated you?” Agent Danvers swipes the digitized key and releases the Kryptonite device from her wrists, a show of good faith. “Kara would be ecstatic.”

Astra breathes a little easier: “So much could go wrong.”

“Yet look at what you’d be gaining,” Agent Danvers pushes. “A new life, with Kara in it.”

“You would do this for me?”

“I…” Agent Danvers sets the shackles on the table, returns to look at Astra full-on.

What Astra observes is a woman aged beyond her young years. An unfortunate mirror, but an image that still retains that shiny element of _hope_ that she lost during her time in Fort Rozz. She wishes for the day that the shine, the brightness, would return to invigorate her.

“I would do anything for Kara,” Agent Danvers swears. “If that means keeping you safe, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

“I have to trust you.”

“Yep. You okay putting your life in human hands?” Agent Danvers extends her right hand, requesting a physical acknowledgement of their pact.

“I suppose there are worse hands to handle my future,” Astra relents. She extends her own and clasps Alexandra Danvers’s hand, squeezes, waits for the agent to pull away. But she doesn’t; she takes the Kryptonian grip with a grimace and a bob of her head, a brief hold of eye contact.

“I’ll keep you safe.”

“Keep _Kara_ safe.”

“I have a lot to arrange,” Agent Danvers begins, releasing Astra’s hand and backing away from her body. “Hank first, then we’ll need to record your statement. Are you okay with that? Only I would have access to it, and Hank. When the time comes for you to come back to us—to Kara, I mean, it will help to hear your story in your own words.”

“Yes, that… makes sense.”

“Alright, stay here,” Agent Danvers commands, turning on her booted heel.

“The shackles, Agent?” Astra asks, though why she desires to be put back into those nauseating handcuffs, she cannot say.

“You’re trusting me with your whole future,” Agent Danvers says, hovering near the door. “I can trust you to stay tucked away for another five minutes.”

Astra smirks at that.

“Can’t I?” the agent grins sadly.

“Call for your commander, Agent,” Astra says, returning to her seat at the table. “I’ll be here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was not edited very well, but I wanted to post before my busy weekend! All mistakes are on me. Holla if you liked it!
> 
> Thanks as always for reading you guys! Best of luck to Benanti for the Broadway gig, they start previews this week!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to the kitchen...

It’s too much…

It’s—something too incredible to be believed, too harrowing to happen to someone like her. She’s average. She’s confused. Just because she feels special doesn’t make it so. She’s supposed to be from _Jersey_ , and now she works in retail. She can’t be—

Astra places her head in her hands. It aches more severely now. She thinks she can see the white of her metacarpals through the thin skin of her eyelids, believes she can map the coordinates of stars in other galaxies. Entire universes open up in her memories, anatomy becomes transparent with a crystalline vision.

This can’t be happening.

But her face, her _voice,_ her replica in every detail, has just chronicled a story too extravagant for her comprehension. Kara is her niece. Alex, her captor. Her own hands, lethal weapons. Her life… nothing.

Nothing she can hold onto, anyway.

She stares at the cuff on her wrist and the right side of her lip crawls up in a sneer. It suddenly feels like moss, fuzzy and suffocating, overtaking her arm; she can feel a phantom vine, slithering up her skin, whispering against the interior of her elbow; a weed, sprouting and crawling and killing her slowly, first the exterior appendage, working its way up her trunk to strangle her dead.

Her head _aches_ and her eyes are hot from tears and something else, something simmering behind her pupils that feels like unbridled energy.

It’s too dark with the blinds drawn.

“No!” she hollers, sweeps that disgusting piece of technology from her round kitchen table. The lazy Susan in the middle shudders; the lemonade in the pitcher ripples.

The tiny revolt isn’t enough.

She grabs hold of the pitcher and hurls it across the room; it rains chartreuse against the tiled back splash and crashes in the sink, shatters, knocks the head of the faucet from its setting so that a small geyser squirts horizontally from the dented fixture. Like a damaged fire hydrant. A ruptured artery.

Still not enough wreckage, so she starts with what’s in reaching distance: the soft pink chrysanthemums are slung toward the tile after she tosses the salt and pepper away; she next chucks the rotating serving platter from the flat surface, then gets pissed enough to upend the entire table. The legs splinter from the force of it and she snaps the back of one of the chairs like a twig for kindling.

It takes so little effort it’s _scary_.

“Aunt Astra!”

It’s Kara, appearing instantaneously, at the entrance of the hallway.

Her face is wet.

Astra shrinks away, afraid of touching her. She wants to _rage_ so savagely, she doesn’t trust herself around anyone else. Human. Alien. Kitchen appliance. She’s spent the past few months planting and growing and caring and now, all she can think of is tearing it all down because none of it was _real_. It’s all wasted effort.

“It’s too _much_ ,” she says, slumping down near her refrigerator.

The water from the busted sink hits her face and she cringes. The few drops feel like a river, like whitewater rafting. She’s been bobbing along in such an easy current with that gaudy orange life preserver, holding her head above a leisurely flow, unconcerned with her downstream trajectory. But now it’s rapids, and the water below her is frigid; her head is up but she’s gasping, and her life vest, her preserver— _Alexandra_ —is suddenly too tight against her chest. She’s not drowning but she’s not breathing easily, not working to get herself out of it—because she can’t. Astra, an apparent alien general, is ill-equipped and lacking.

She wonders how much longer until she goes under.

“I know, I know,” Kara sinks down to her knees, doesn’t approach her. “There’s a lot of sensation… the water, the light, the heat. It’s hard, but you’ve got to breathe.”

“Get this off of me,” Astra begs, claws at her wrist until there are little red lines running the length of her forearm. She doesn’t even draw blood, not when she digs her nails as deeply into the flesh as they’ll go. The scratches fade instantly.

She’s infallibility incarnate.

“Alex!” Kara calls, all the while inching across the tile, closer and closer to Astra. “The Kryptonite cuff!”

Kara’s blurry, moving too fast, but it’s not until Astra stops yanking at the cuff that she realizes Kara’s not the one moving— _she’s simply convulsing._

Astra abandons her mission with the cuff. She can’t face Alex right now: “No, not her, don’t—”

“No, she can do this,” Kara says, holding her hands up defensively, as if Astra would arrest her, hold a knife to her throat, burn her alive. “Alex!!!” Kara calls.

Human ears pick it up this time.

“Oh God,” Alex gasps upon entry, then walks toward the far side of the kitchen, lowers herself to her knees as well.

They’re coming at her from two different angles; she's backed into the kitchen cabinet like an injured, demented house pet. One who will do themselves more harm trying to evade the help offered than if she just sits still and allows them to set things right.

Astra has little left to lose, but the vibrations of Alex’s knees against the tile are so _loud_. Kara’s breathing is ragged and thunderous, the slip of skin against fabric is crescendoing and Astra can’t _take it_.

“Kara, I’m going to need you to get in front of her,” Alex murmurs.

Kara slides along the floor, and Astra can feel the weight of the girl in her core, the movement of transferred balance from knee to the heel of her hand, so that when Kara pushes, slides along her thigh, two strands of thread from her trousers catch in one of the grooves on the tile. Alex’s heart is trying to thump its way out of her ribcage while Astra’s senses overtake her nervous system, like invading kudzu eating away at all native greenery.

“Astra,” Alex calls her back from the melee in her head, back from the onslaught of sensation. “Astra, you’re having a panic attack.”

Kara shakes uncertainly on the floor a foot away, the water hitting her glasses, the droplets congregating on the lenses like tears invited for a pity party.

“Astra, I’m going to put my hand on your knee,” Alex says, sliding to where she’s inches from her. “Kara is going to come in front of me; the pills you took are acting faster than we anticipated.”

“What are they _doing_ to me?” Astra cries, but her own voice is too loud in her head.

“Kryptonian senses are extremely sensitive, Aunt Astra,” Kara explains. “You’ve been living with them dulled for so long; they used the Kryptonite to keep your powers from causing any trouble while you were hidden.”

“It _hurts_.”

“Astra, Astra, look at me.”

Astra feels Alex squeeze her knee and she can’t help it; she’s still so _angry_ with the woman but she needs something familiar, something to keep her from shutting down completely. She huddles nearer Alex as her body keeps shaking, her muscles rending themselves then reforming with some devastating new chemical introduced into her system—or perhaps, eradicated from her system. She wonders if she’s having a seizure, if she’s getting high, if she’s been poisoned. Alex moves to sit behind her, pulls Astra against her solid chest as she shakes, guiding her until she’s situated between Alex’s spread legs with the other woman’s arms around her waist, cradling her cuffed wrist.

“Think of it like a detox, Kara,” Alex mumbles. “She’s going to have to hurt, first.”

The vibrations near Astra’s head thump against her eardrum as if she were standing right beside the speaker at a rock concert.

“Going cold turkey. The pills have dissipated the Kryptonite from the embedded slow release, but the cuff’s next.”

Kara tenses and Astra hates that she’s hurt her, hates that Kara _fears_ her.

“What if she—”

“Why do you think you’re the one in front of her?” Alex asks, and if Astra wasn’t positive her body was rioting right now, she would have smiled.

“Hey, Astra? Astra, listen to me,” Alex murmurs so low, but it still feels like a shout.

“Astra, come on, answer me. Are you listening?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Astra manages, but she feels like little needles are jabbing up the back of her spine, twenty for each vertebrae—sickening acupuncture. She arches her back and Alex pulls the General closer, swipes Astra's hair over one shoulder and places her lips against the crook of Astra’s neck. They’re crusty and chapped but moist at the corners, like Alex had licked them outside and a breeze had hardened and desiccated the skin.

“Feel this, okay?” Alex burrows into her neck. “Do you feel me talking to you?”

“Hmmph…”

“Astra, do you feel me?”

“Yes.”

“Good, now, you remember that time we met at the park? The one with the baseball complexes? Little league? All those kids?” Alex presses the questions into her skin and for anyone else, it would be a jumbled series of incomprehensible syllables, nothing more than murmurs. To Astra, it’s like an audiobook through a new pair of ear buds.

“It was… windy,” Astra says, but her own voice is grating, nothing like Alex’s smoother mumbles. She feels Alex’s hand slipping down her forearm to touch the cuff, and the other woman momentarily abandons Astra’s neck.

“Hold her down, Kara,” Alex says.

“She’ll crush you,” Kara hiccups—and oh, damn, _by the throne of Rao_ , the sound of her Little One crying is cacophony, discordant and terrible.

“I’ll be fine,” Alex mumbles, back to her ear, tickling the lock of hair there.

But even Astra’s hair follicles hurt, like she’s been shampooing with acid and it’s seeping in through her pores, running through her veins—

_This is who you choose to side with? Against your own people? Your own family?_

_Stop it, you’re hurting her!_

_I’m sorry, was she more forthcoming when you asked nicely?_

_There’s another way to save Hank—_

_We are not releasing a combatant of this threat level._

_General we are better than this!_

_We are, they aren’t—now get her out of here!_

_No don’t—don’t, please—nnaaahh!!!_

_Aaaahhhh!!!!_

“AAAAAHHHH!!!” Astra kicks out, thrashes, the green is _drowning_ her.

“Kara, grab her!”

“Alex, watch her fist, your injuries—”

“Don’t worry about me!” Alex commands against the spasms. “Astra, Astra, come on, General, you’re not gonna let a little bit of Kryptonite get you down, huh? You’re better than that, come on.”

Astra can’t breathe, can’t see through her scalding, bleary wet eyes. There’s a pinch on the left side of her neck and it’s boiling into her throat. Her throat. Alex’s lips— _at her throat._

“That day in the park,” Alex murmurs again, keeps her breathing steady, separates it from her heart, which is now slowing in its pace.

It’s amazing the control Alex has over her fragile human system, even during dire straits.

Astra holds onto Alex's thigh with her free right hand, digs into the flesh there and feels the denim rip. Surely, surely she can do as well as Alex.

“That day in the park,” Alex repeats, readjusts her leg, but Astra grips all the harder. “You were waiting on the bench for me, remember? You brought me a handful of Bloodroot, those little white flowers? And you told me to be careful, because they could burn a hole in my skin. Only you would think that’s funny, you know?”

Her eyes are closed, tears leaking from the discomfort, but Astra can hear Alex speaking to her, feel her hand working at the cuff on her forearm; the other hand, the one that had been wrapped around Astra’s waist, is now reaching into one of the pockets on her black trousers.

“But they were pretty, wrapped up in a little bow. You brought me lemonade and flowers and no one’s ever done that for me before, Astra.”

Alex’s lips are so close to her neck Astra can feel the interruption of skin to scab, the split Alex had garnered from some other fight.

“I felt ridiculous for pushing you in the swing, but you insisted. You said… you said you missed flying, then. You didn’t even know if you had flown before, had asked me if you were a pilot and I had to lie, and I hated it, lying to you. But you _can_ fly, Astra. You can get so close to the sun—I know how much you love it,” Alex kisses her neck as she swipes something near the cuff on her wrist. “You pointed out the physics on one of those kites in the air at the park and I wanted to tell you—you _can_ fly—that you’d get to fly again. I wanted to hold your hand,” Alex confesses, as she takes the fingers of the cuffed appendage, entwines them with her own.

“Alex, be careful—”

“Like a band-aid, Kara,” Alex redirects. “Do you feel me? I’m right here; like I was, back at the park. When I wanted to hold your hand… I don’t do that, but you make me want to, so I am now, okay? I’m going to hold your hand, and you’re going to look Kara right in the eyes…”

Astra feels Alex reposition herself behind her trembling body, remove her mouth from her neck again, bob her head—probably to direct Kara. There’s a heat in her head that feels like a volcanic eruption, the magma that’s been collecting in her veins needs to be letted, needs to be leached; she’s delusional, she thinks, her mind carouseling back to the scientific name for a Bloodroot bouquet: _Sanguinaria_.

“You’re going to look Kara right in the eyes, and I’m going to be right behind you, okay? I’m right here.”

“Alex—please,” Astra calls. “Kara, I’m so sorry—”

“Right in the eyes, okay Astra? I’m taking the cuff off on three,” Alex says, the fingers of her free hand migrating to the constricting accessory. “Ready Kara?”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

“One…”

Astra feels Alex wrap her hand around the black material.

“Two…”

The fire in her head sears the fluid lining her brain, eats away at the inside of her skull.

“Three!”

Astra wails and neon heat shoots from her eyelids as she looks at her niece, her Little One, her pride on Krypton. The waves of temperature billow back against her body but she hardly notices, hardly registers the shift of the devastatingly warm air around her, because her blackened kitchen— _deep space_ —is now spasming with light and colored spheres. A supernova with every blink, and Kara’s eyes, the heat there, matches her own, presses the energy back and burns it up between them, allows her to expend it by meeting the beams with her own glare.

Alex has somehow contained the destruction to the smoking kitchen—anchors her still, even during this torrent of sensation. And is this love? Holding her back from her own destruction amid the steam of broken plumbing, as waves of heat slowly drain the power out of herself and her blood kin? Is love ripping away every memory that’s ever informed her, only to allow her this agony, this humiliation, on a pathetic, _human_ floor, with pain radiating throughout her cells?

“Aaaaahhhh!” she shouts, an echo of a torturous interrogation.

So much energy screams inside of her. It howls, exuberant, stretches to its full length from the tips of her toenails to the extended ends of her floating, ethereal curls—she shivers with it, all funneled into two scorching, raspberry streams of light that resemble a failed batch of peonies she’d attempted to nurture in the flower bed nearest her porch—

How can such destruction grow anything beautiful?

“Come on, Astra…”

Alex at her ear, her grip on her wrist so brave despite the walls melting overhead. Plaster crumbles and steam rises and there’s fire from her kitchen table… she realizes snapping the chair was the equivalent of preparing kindling. As the mess grows, the incessant pulsing of the energy fades; it retracts to controlled levels that still hum beneath her skin, but don’t push so insistently against her pupils. The beams dim, and Kara adjusts her own power to temper the counter blast. Seconds pass and the beams sprouting from her eyes flicker, fade, and she’s left crying and broken on the floor, her niece and almost-lover panting their panic on the soiled kitchen tile.

Memories resurface instantaneously. A childhood, trickery and lessons and occasional travel under mother’s constant tutelage. Training, for years and years. Commendations for service, secret operations, her lessons at conservatory, checking in with her mother, the first arranged meeting with Senator Ul-Kan, and their eldest son, Non. The day Kara was born, her wedding vows, her ranking ceremony, the day she first killed a civilian in the crossfire.

The day she accidentally tore the head from a human torso when she only meant to incapacitate.

When she first discovered her super-strength, on this strange, primitive, wildly selfish planet.

Every murder she’s orchestrated since.

“No…” she mumbles, and fights against Alex’s hold.

“Astra—oooof!” Alex grunts, and Alex is no match— _no match_ against her.

No match _for_ her.

Astra scrambles up on all fours then manages to orient herself when upright; Kara’s taken care of the tiny fires with her freeze breath, but the scorched stench of ruin hangs heavy in the space she once considered safehaven. She can’t be here, can’t face all those memories of destruction, of careless and justified and righteous and questionable killing she’s orchestrated.

Not the powers this time, but the memories… _it’s too much._

“I can’t…” she says, but even finishing her thoughts proves too monumental. She dashes outside, needs her sun like she needs Alexandra—dares not touch either for fear of getting burned.

“Astra!” Kara follows, hot on her heels. Her niece grabs hold of her now freed wrist and tries to keep her from flailing. They struggle momentarily until Astra whirls out of her hold, knocks against the patio furniture and dislodges Alex’s present… the pot full of Forget-me-nots now shattered and uprooted, splayed black and blue against the concrete.

She’s killed. She’s ruined. She’s not _worth_ this.

“Astra, wait—dammit, _Astra_!!!”

Alex this time, but Astra’s already a foot off the ground, levitating in a pair of singed jeans and a ratty old t-shirt. The flowers below her are a mockery of her past; months growing beauty can’t trump a lifetime of cultivating death. She takes one final look at the pair of women who tried to save her: her Little One, no longer little, no longer needing someone to watch over her.

And what qualifications, what _right_ , did she have to watch over Kara? She’s no one’s mother. No one’s role model. Kara is everything she ever wanted to be—strong, powerful, just, merciful, driven—the backwardness of the situation feels like a blow to the gut.

And Alex, her darling Alexandra… stares back at her like she’s worth saving. Like she’s worth _anything_.

She’s not.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she can hear the return of the General, stoicism overriding emotion every time. As soon as she allows herself to feel, she loses sight of what’s best for everyone. And what’s best for everyone here is if she no longer burdens them. No longer allows herself to be a responsibility for another person. She’s puzzled out that if Kara and Alex have come for her, the war is over… resolved, at least, and she’s no longer accountable for soldiers or family.

Least of all the two women crying over her now. They would never be crying if she’d not been so foolish.

“I truly am,” Astra whispers, but she needs time. Time to reconcile her memories, time to deal with this murderer… _soldier_ , her mind corrects—even subconsciously, she justifies her kills—she’s come to acknowledge as _herself_. “I never intended to harm either of you. I… never intended to harm anyone.”

“It’s okay, Astra,” Alex begins.

“It’s over,” Kara reiterates. “We’ve come to take you home.”

“What home?” Astra scoffs. “I don’t deserve either of you,” she says, staring at the black soil at Alex’s feet, the brick orange pottery shards with the painted name testament to her failures. “I no longer need looking after, and you have no obligation to me. I love… I love you both, very dearly, and I wish you every happiness.”

She shoots off into the sky, hoping that if she flies high enough, she’ll soon rest among the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A weaker chapter on the whole, but I had to break her in order to build her up again. Astra, you gorgeous misguided catsuit of rage, how close you were to ensnaring our hearts as a sympathetic side character with minor sociopathic tendencies. 
> 
> Still a part of BringAstraBack2k16. And LB got nominated for a Saturn Award, which should only do credit towards the character. Drop a line if you feel so moved!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Instead of a minor Benanti reference I made a Hamilton reference because the Danvers sisters aspect of Monday night broke me down to my most elemental parts and ground me into dust.

Astra hears the swoosh of the cape behind her, the rustle of indestructible fabric whistling amidst the dripping wet leaves and hissing sprinkler systems. The onerous humidity presses closely against the black cotton shirt she’d pilfered from a thrift shop on the west side of town. It’s like a dry drowning, so thick in the atmosphere that her usual long waves of hair curl tightly and dangle from her skull, unkempt, unbrushed, untended. Astra knows she looks more than a little out of sorts, gnarly, like one of those poor urchins lining back alleyways who rummage through refuse containers just to snag a meal.

The massive greenhouse atrium at National City’s Botanical Gardens is quiet though, especially after hours. The ferns explode from the confines of their beds and dribble over the partitions and into the walkways. The vines chase the heavens and the petals run the gamut of the color spectrum. It’s comforting on her most lonesome nights. Every now and then she’ll catch half of her reflection in the glass walls; in those moments she miscalculates, chokes on her hope, because that half-look is partially Alura. She feels the regret swell up again like a burning reflux in her throat, like a geyser of disappointment she wishes she could just _release_. Astra hates her reflection and the eyes that press back at her, mock her—tear her down so expertly.

At least the plants are gorgeous and silent. They do not judge so harshly.

She’s walked the grounds here on occasional evenings since she fled—since she left her niece and her… well, since she left the only two people who might once have cared for her. People who would do best to forget her, move on, be better.

Too bad one of those people has superhuman powers, and the other, an almost superhuman deathwish.

“Little One,” Astra murmurs, running her fingers over the broad, slick leaf of a Hibiscus blossom. The petals are yellow, almost a goldenrod, very similar to Kara’s hair in the sunlight. The center of the bloom is a deep coral, and Astra can imagine the flower pricked, nectar running, as if it were bleeding out to the tips of the petals. As if blood could one day stain her darling niece’s body. If Kara keeps up her escapades, it will only be a matter of time.

“Aunt Astra,” Kara says softly.

She should’ve known better than to stay in the city. But it’s been just over three weeks, nights spent wandering aimlessly, flying about the earth, sleeping fitfully at random hours in unused hotel rooms and abandoned rental properties and on one occasion, in the middle of the desert, just so she could wake to the brilliant stars. But even her supersight cannot extend past the farthest known galaxy to humankind.

What had she read, all those months ago, back when she believed herself to be human?

Galaxy EGSY8p7, over thirteen lightyears away from this puny race, designated by nothing more than a series of letters and numbers. To a then-Colonel in the Kryptonian military serving and traveling, it was the Plextrillate galaxy, host to a series of planets home to aqueous humanoids, with their gills and filtration systems that distilled the primary liquid source on their planet; what was common environment to the races of that galaxy was acidic and poisonous to any intergalactic visitors. She had once visited a trading post in that region on the planet Cruzex, sent to retrieve a collection of munitions laced with the acidic liquid. Upon entry to an enemy’s body, the concentrated acid would explode, eating away at the innards of the opposition.

Even a flesh wound could kill.

She’d gone through eight magazines of ammunition on an ambush a week after her visit. Killed a fair portion of an enemy battalion when she and her Kryptonian troops took their fort. Was awarded a medal of valor, another notch on her uniform for marksmanship.

Stripped, of course, of all titles and accomplishments before her sentencing to Fort Rozz. But what did shiny pieces of metal matter when she’d single-handedly killed half a regiment, let a corrosive bullet eat away at the heart of some alien child’s father?

They never mattered at all. Nothing does... not now.

“You found me.” Astra kneels toward the plant in the flower bed before her and runs her fingers through the soil. It’s dark and damp and sometimes, most times, she wishes she was underneath the soil just like the tree roots.

“You didn’t exactly make it easy.”

She hears Kara approach, her tread light, cautious, as if she’s worried Astra will shoot off through the glass and let the shards rain overtop her.

“Supergirl deserves a challenge,” she says quietly.

“After everything that’s happened to me, I deserve to have you back in my life.”

“Don’t be foolish, Little One.” Astra sculpts a small mountain of earth and flattens it, runs a finger through it and scatters the clumps about the base of the plant’s stem. She misses her garden, longs for it, wonders at how she’d only been able to nurture, to create, to help, when she was a just a sliver of her true self.

Destruction comes far too naturally for her.

“I’m not being foolish. You’re being an asshole—oh!”

Astra releases a wry chuckle, turns her head over her shoulder from her spot on the ground. Kara’s clapped one hand over her mouth and her forehead is scrunched, embarrassed and apologetic and every ounce her wonderful niece. Astra rises slowly and wipes the dirt from her hands on the side of her ratty jeans.

“Kara Zor-El, I’ve spent enough time here to know that with that word, you’ve broken a primary domestic rule on Krypton, which charges you to pay due deference to your elders.”

“When they are _worthy_ of respect, I’ll deliver it. Flying around without letting me help you is just being stubborn and petulant,” Kara fires back, her niece’s little costume fueling a novel attitude of combativeness that Astra never saw in her when she was younger. That ridiculous crimson cape flutters behind her, even in the static air of the closed-off garden. “It was an honor to ask and receive help on Krypton. Do the honorable thing, and come back home with me.”

“What honor have I shown, for years, dearest?”

Astra’s tears well but never fall—the General simply holds Kara’s gaze in the dark. She hasn’t cried, not since that first afternoon in the destroyed suburban kitchen. Sulked, brooded, lamented and raged, relearned and honed her powers in the crevices of several solitary mountain ranges—but she hasn’t cried.

“I’ve lost all traces of honor, yet you’ve built something so wonderful here. I cannot expect you to rearrange your entire world to… rehabilitate or—I cannot articulate the sentiment—only that I would never ask you to be responsible for my terrible decisions.”

“It’s understandable that you would feel that way,” Kara says, moving closer, reaching out to grab Astra’s dirty hands. Dirty in more ways than one. “But I’m offering you a chance to come home to your family. I want you in my life. I believe you deserve this forgiveness—because you’ve _earned_ it, Aunt Astra.”

“It does not feel earned, Little One.”

Astra pats the top of Kara’s hand and huffs. Her argument is weak, her tone patronizing. She understands, somewhere in her gut, that every previous decision she’s made has been justified, has had some logic and follow-through and backing and reason, but re-remembering every shot fired, every explosive set, every punch landed—all within the span of a dysfunctional and tumultuous three weeks—is taking a harsher mental toll on her than she can stand.

And then there’s the vestiges of insanity, lingering at the edges of her consciousness, the peripherals of her brain matter. If it had merely been the Phantom Zone, a deep sleep, it might have been tolerable. But Fort Rozz and its stressors, its solitary cells that drove her to delusional mania for indeterminate moments that seemed infinite… she remembers the instability as clearly as she remembers Alex's breath on her cheek. But Astra fears she harbors the lunacy, even still. Knows that heartfelt attempts at integration might still register as madness to the humans because she is (as she’s been repeating to herself many times over) _not one of them._

“It doesn’t matter if you feel you’ve earned it,” Kara insists. “Please, Aunt Astra, I give it freely. I know you want to come home. The only reason I was able to catch up with you tonight was because you were watching us. I saw you on the opposite roof.”

“Perhaps not all of my skills have returned, then. I was once excellent at undetected surveillance.”

Astra weaves her way between different flower beds, padding gently over the stone walkway. Kara trails behind, eager for any scraps of understanding Astra cares to throw her way. Astra levitates on accident. Kara begins to cry. It’s pathetic that the daughter of Zor-El would debase herself in such a fashion, sad and astounding and regrettable and miraculous that Supergirl never gives up on anybody.

And that Kara, her Little One, is not giving up on _her_.

“I’d hope you would want to talk with me,” Kara sniffles. “With… Alex.”

Astra stutter steps as she reads the plaque to her left, a black slab with embossed bronze lettering that reads _nerium oleander_ , a distracting magenta bud with silky petals that can cause convulsions and seizures, not to mention death, for humans. Demise by flowers, Astra thinks, and is saddened that she’ll never die surrounded by beauty.

“She misses you terribly,” Kara mumbles. Astra flicks her eyes toward her niece to find Kara staring at her red boots, twitching her fingers before her. She is still clearly uncomfortable with the topic, and it’s a different sort of bravery that Kara exhibits when broaching it.

“I cannot believe she would be so open, concerning the matter.”

“She’s not, but… I know my sister like I know my own mind. She’s… Astra, I—I don’t know what went on with you two and, honestly, I don’t think I _want_ to, but I’ve never seen her so devastated.”

“Kara, you must understand—”

“If you won’t come back for me, will you come back for her?” Kara asks, and her cheeks are tear-stained and shiny from the reflection of stars off the glass panels.

“Kara, no.” Astra finally relents, backpedals to pull her weeping Supergirl close to her chest, to hug her so tightly she cannot mistake the action. “You cannot believe…” Astra releases Kara from her hold and strokes the pieces of blonde hair obscuring her face back over her shoulders, tucks that stubborn wave that is very much like her own (like Kara’s mother’s) behind Kara’s left ear. “Regardless of what happened between myself and your sister, dearest, bravest Kara, you are worth more to me than this world or any other.”

“Can’t you see?” Kara says, wrapping her arms back around Astra and burying her face into her shoulder. “You’re worth it, too. You’re the only person I can hold without breaking. The only person I can really talk to about Krypton, about mother. My only remaining blood bond. You are worth so much more than your past deeds, Astra. And if I’ve been blessed somehow, in some… strange, roundabout way, to be the one to grant you this grace? Then I give it so willingly and gladly. Please, Aunt Astra.”

Astra holds her close and rocks Kara until her sobs subside. The perfume from the plants is overbearing now, as overwrought and dejected as she feels. It’s a monumental step, what she’d been hoping for, she supposes, when she sacrificed her freedom and her memories to help the DEO in their cause, to help Kara in hers.

But it still hurts to know herself, to know that all the decisions she’s made have only ever left Kara injured, alone, crying. How can her next decision turn out any differently, when all her past decisions have left her aching?

“I’m… afraid,” Astra whispers into Kara’s ear, curling her fingers into that silly cape that is, admittedly, somewhat flattering.

“You’re not afraid of anything, ever.”

“There are things you don’t know about me any longer, Little One. You may not be able to harm me but I fear I am… broken. Not wholly what I once was.”

“No,” Kara says, muffling her gasp of sorrow against Astra’s shoulder. Astra feels Kara squeeze her tightly, and it’s a lovely pressure, certainly effects her, in ways that other stimuli have yet to register. “No, no, no, no, Astra, you’ve never been more wrong.”

“Even when I tried to reform an entire species?” Astra says humorlessly. “Rule them?”

“Even then. Your good intentions were leading you to hell, but now there’s no... uhm, sort of skewed justification supporting your logic,” Kara pulls away and wipes some of the tears from her cheeks. It reminds Astra of an afternoon when a very young Kara had snuck off from her mother during a council session, scramble over crates and transport materials in a secure area, only to return with a minor injury. Astra had treated that wound without Alura knowing, responded instantly to the spy beacon when Kara called.

And yet, Kara hurts differently here. It’s not an exterior patch-up that she requires, due to her invincibility. It’s internal, deep, and Astra doesn’t know if she has the strength to reach in and soothe Kara when she can’t even heal herself.

“On this planet, we’re exceptional,” Kara continues. “Which means we’ve got a greater burden to shoulder.”

“I am not strong enough.”

“Well then,” Kara smiles softly. “Isn’t it great that you don’t have to carry it all by yourself?”

“As I said, I cannot expect—”

“Don’t expect. Just accept it. Accept that we want to help you,” Kara reiterates, and her expression is adamant. “Gah, I don’t see how she fell for you. You’re as stubborn as she is.”

Astra straightens back to her tense military posture. She had relaxed, slouched, and crumpled under Kara’s comforting embrace, but talk of Alex, _with Kara_ —

“Kara, I…. I am very sorry to have, that is…” Astra looks skyward, but the canopy of greenery blocks the stars, provides her little distraction. She thought she would have to face the pair of them one day, perhaps together, perhaps separately, but speaking of one to the other… she is not prepared.

“I can’t say that what I felt isn’t true. From my understanding of the Martian’s abilities, he can take away memories, information, but he doesn’t take away the formative qualities those memories create. Some part of me… loved her. Still does, I believe.” Astra runs a hair through her scraggly curls and pivots away, so Kara cannot bear witness to her morose mortification. She approaches another plant and bends over it, surveys the architecture and structural integrity of its trunk just for something to do. “It is amusing, I suppose.”

“What is?” Kara asks, studying her.

“I had wondered, when you came of age, if you would speak to me of love. Non and I were not much of an example, but your father cherished your mother. I know the difficulties that come with finding a confidante, when speaking of such matters. I had hoped to be yours. Not for _you_ to act as _my_ counselor.”

“Before we get into my issues, I think you should talk to Alex first.”

Astra fingers the leaves on one of the ferns, plucks a straggler off the drooping branch and mushes it in her hand. The green is gel-like and wet beneath her fingertips.

“How is she, if… if it’s not awkward of me to inquire?”

Kara sets her jaw and sighs, places her hands on her hips in a defeated gesture.

“Look, as weird as it is with you, and as mad as it made me at the beginning, I… I mean, I’ve never, _ever_ seen her like this. Alex doesn’t cry easy, Aunt Astra,” Kara begins pacing in place as she frets.

Astra watches her movements, standing still as stone. She will need to advise her niece on calming herself under stressful situations.

“When Alex told me she stabbed you—lied to me—I didn’t realize what it meant for her,” Kara continues, wound tighter than a detonation coil. “She absolutely broke down in the sparring room of the DEO, even though she knew you were safe. Hated so much that you and I had to be apart, that she had to suggest the memory wipe to keep you away from the combatants at Fort Rozz. She felt she’d robbed us of something, that she would lose us both if it all went south. She thinks it’s all her fault and she can’t get over it because she _loves_ you.”

“Kara,” Astra begins, motioning abruptly for her niece to stop the pacing. “It is no longer as simple as requited affection. I am not of her kind.”

“Please don’t use that excuse, or I’m going to be single forever,” Kara jokes.

It falls flat in the dark greenhouse.

“Then what of my previous vows? I have heard nothing of Fort Rozz, until now. I suppose I am a widow?”

Kara kicks absently at the footpath and accidentally crushes a portion of the concrete. They both wince; Kara grumbles and shakes her head as she stoops to push the fragments back in place.

“Yes,” she mutters, packing the cement with all the spastic force of a jackhammer. “Non was killed in the battle.”

Astra had figured as much.

“I should observe the mourning period.”

“You’ve been flying around for almost a month. It’ll be over in like… two days.”

“Nevertheless, it is custom,” Astra intones. “I did not realize I was being unfaithful, not that he was ever strictly faithful to me during the course of our marriage. But he was a fair lieutenant, up until his hunger for power overran his better judgment.”

“But you didn’t love him,” Kara says.

“No.”

“Not like you love Alex.”

Astra grins, but it’s very weak. She hasn’t been eating much over the past few weeks.

She thinks of Alexandra and her visits: how she’d stay past her check-in times, and how quarter hours turned into halves turned into whole extra hours spent, at a plain kitchen table or out back in her garden or, on the later occasions when that unnameable thing between them began to flourish, on the small sofa in her common room, both of them feigning interest in some useless program just so they could sit inches from each other. Feel the body heat, the subtle shifts in position just to be millimeters closer. Perhaps Astra should’ve recognized something strange, even back then: she could always hear Alex’s pulse, was always so attuned to her breathing, even over the sound of the television.

It’s not difficult, the more she thinks about it, to reconcile Kara’s sister, Agent Danvers, with Alex, the woman she had called Allie Smith. Every interaction between herself and Alex has been intense; every brush of skin, whether in combat or in love, exhilarating. And Alex’s primary focus, just like Astra’s, has always been Kara. It’s almost narcissism to a certain degree, falling for someone so similar, so staggeringly capable. And yet they are _species_ apart, born lightyears away from one another. Non was the perfect candidate for a lifelong partnership, but not an intimate relationship.

Dare she even call hers and Alex’s maneuvering about each other—their fighting and forgetting and fucking and forgiving—a romance? She’s never dreamed of such, not as a soldier, not as a survivor. She doesn’t have time for it; and yet, she wants to bring Alex flowers.

“No,” Astra finally vocalizes. “Not like I love Alexandra.”

“If you still feel this way, I think the first step is to talk to her. Rao knows she won’t talk to me,” Kara says, falling into step beside Astra as she begins her retreat to the entrance of the greenhouse. “Unless it’s to apologize. If I hear ‘I’m sorry’ one more time from the pair of you, my head is going to explode.”

“I cannot address her now, Little One. I am quite tired.”

“Then come get some sleep in a safe place,” Kara says. “I won’t even tell Alex you’re staying with me. Just, take two or three days. Come home to my apartment. Eat something. Work on forgiving yourself, because I already have.”

Astra holds up a hand as a portly security officer moseys by, none the wiser to the aliens in the shadows. With a tilt of her head, Astra zooms past the climate controlled greenhouse and into the lobby of the outpost with the information desk, Kara hot on her heels.

“Once again, you give me more credit than I deserve,” Astra says.

“You don’t deserve credit for personal hygiene,” Kara smirks, yanks the front door off its lock with the flick of her finger. “No wonder you like to hang out in a garden with all those floral scents. You smell like road kill.”

Astra can’t help it, can’t find any reason not to.

So she smiles.

And it’s the first time in weeks she’s felt a moment of levity, a surge of something positive in her chest. Kara’s walking beside her and offering her a future and… it’s as much as she could hope for, given the circumstances.

She could still hope for Alexandra, but for now, Kara is more than enough.

“I was rained on the other day. I’m sure that took care of some lingering grime,” she returns.

“Unless you had some bar soap and a loofa, it counts for nothing. Agenda for the rest of the night includes you showering and an early morning pizza.”

“Pizza?” Astra quirks an inquisitive brow.

“Holy crap, you’ve never had pizza, have you?” Kara’s eyes sparkle brighter than the city lights.

“No,” Astra says. It doesn’t much matter what Kara gives her, as long as her niece still wants her close.

“How didn’t you order it at least once when you were off… you know?” Kara asks. "Being human?"

“I cooked my meals,” Astra says, and wonders why Kara’s face morphs into incomprehension at the suggestion.

“Well, you’re in for a treat. In fact, between the two of us… I might could put a big order in on the DEO’s account. Call it a work expense for hosting an alien ally.”

“I’m not entirely sure what you mean, but I will trust you, Little One.”

“You’ll follow me back to my apartment?” Kara asks, twisting her cape back over her shoulder. She bends her knees and preps for take off. “Promise you won’t fly out of my life again?”

“I don’t know if it’s wise of me to make any guarantees, but I can consent to a shower and this… pizza.”

“Then we’ll work our way up from there,” Kara says, shooting off into the sky.

Astra follows, just a bit slower due to her fatigue, riding the rippling windstream behind Kara. She watches her niece fly, twist, turn over her shoulder to check on her progress. Kara delivers that winsome smile and veers sharply around a building. Astra can hear it, on the ends of the breeze, Kara’s reassuring support:

“I love you, Aunt Astra!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this with the intention of writing three chapters and a guesstimated 10k words. Yet here we are. I'm really going to try to stick to one more chapter to close... obviously with 14000% more Alex Danvers. But I'm firm in my belief that Kara is motivation for both, so this chapter felt extremely necessary.


	7. Chapter 7

She’s faced staggering numbers of enemies from foreign lands; has planned tactically sound but realistically shaky infiltrations; has even terrorized with more than questionable interrogation methods for enemy soldiers; but never has High General Astra In-Ze, First Daughter of her House, Arclominian of the First Order and Lord Markswoman of the Elite Brigadiers of the Bastion Range, ever faced anything more intimidating than the painted wooden slab of white with 4C embossed on the door in front of her. The pot of flowers isn’t even heavy in her hands, but the drink in her opposite grip is beginning to sweat against her skin. She’s been standing outside the door for nearly fifteen minutes… and she feels no braver than when she set foot on the first stair at the bottom floor.

_I still think you should call first_ , Kara had said right before Astra had thrown on a spare pair of jeans, a blouse, and a strange half-garment Kara had called a ‘cardigan.’ She had taken Kara’s advice, eaten, slept, _showered_ , and rested, for the past few days at her niece’s apartment. But any time her phone chimed, Kara was quick to answer; some forty percent of the time, with demands from her boss, another twenty from two civilian men Astra had little interest in, and the other forty percent was check-in texts from Alexandra.

_You know,_ Kara had said about her visit today. _Just to… give Alex a forewarning._

_She may not wish to speak with me. If I go and see her, it will force her to acknowledge me._

_I don’t think this is something you want to force, Aunt Astra._

Perhaps Kara had been right.

It was quite early, just before eight a.m. on a Sunday, four weeks since she left Alex—confused, bereft, hurt?—in the back of that garden in Jackson City.

Kara had assured her Alex would be at the apartment; the agent’s days at the DEO were stretching into lots of logged overtime with every AWOL alien the DEO’s tactical retrieval team had to round up. During the final battle a month ago, once it had become apparent that the remaining Kryptonians and Fort Rozz combatants were going to lose, some of the alien fighters had fled, rather than surrender themselves to the covert human organization. And so Alex rounded them up, her searches and infiltrations lasting so long that she ended up bunking at the DEO more often than not, according to Kara.

_She’s trying to work herself into forgetting you_ , Kara had grumbled. _She doesn’t like feeling sad._

Sad.

Alexandra was sad… because of her.

_I don’t want her to forget me._

But Alex was supposed to be home, supposed to be on thirty-six hours of forced leave as mandated by the Green Martian. That’s what Kara told her, had assured her.

Which finds General Astra and her weakening resolve standing, with both hands full, in the hallway of a primitive human domicile.

“If you keep staring at it you’ll burn a hole through the wood,” Alex’s voice grumbles from down the hall. She’s not even speaking all that loudly, but Astra hears.

Astra redirects her attention to the stairwell, her overlooking Alex’s approach signal enough that her anxieties seemed to be overrunning her super senses. She looks between Alex, clad in black compression pants and a grey shirt, and the white door of Alex’s apartment—she feels juvenile again, as if she and Alura have been found out once more for switching places at the Premier Chamberman’s appointment reception. Once caught, she’d felt remorseful, exposed, and even a little frightened. Unlike the magistrates on Krypton, humans have never intimidated her before.

But with that grim line at her lips and the pinched ridge on her forehead, Astra admits to herself she’s utterly terrified of Agent Alexandra Danvers.

“Good morning,” Astra ventures as Alex approaches, her human movements lax and heated, her pulse thumping fast and cacophonous in Astra’s ears.

Alex doesn’t respond, just flicks her finger across a touch screen that is similar to Kara’s. She removes two white wires from her ears and tugs at the waistband of her shorts, extracting a key and shuffling down the hallway where Astra stands, at a loss, awaiting some address from the human so she’ll know the proper way to go about this prickly interaction.

“Agent Danvers,” Astra tries again, stepping aside to allow the woman access to her doorknob and dead bolt.

Alex darts her eyes away from her work at the lock, and it is with great regret and sorrow that Astra notices just how _tired_ Alex looks. Astra sees it in the laugh lines that frame her clever mouth, now deep, cavernous strikes that upset the geography of her well-crafted, human face. Despite her formidable training and lean musculature, Alexandra has always looked delicately beautiful—she possesses the classic, regally symmetric features of ancients immortalized in stone on Krypton. But those sorrowful lines, lines that seem to fissure her happiness from her soul, have manifested themselves in her hurt expression, skeptical countenance, the hard-set angle of her clenched jaw. It resonates deeply within Astra, the knowledge that she’s chiseled those terrible lines so indelibly onto the other woman’s face—has almost _scarred_ her.

It hurts worse than Kryptonite in her veins.

“You’ve been running,” Astra deduces.

“Can’t outrun you,” Alex mutters, her forehead resting against the panel on her door frame.

“You should… replenish your lost electrolytes,” Astra says, daring to inch closer to Alex. Astra can feel the heat pulsating from Alex’s extremities, can smell the tang of perspiration and human body odor that once set her on edge. “I have brought lemonade, if you… if you would like it.”

“Of course you did,” Alex sighs, rotating the knob with an unnecessarily violent twist. It rattles against the wood as the handle _schiks_ back into place.

Alex slips over the threshold but Astra doesn’t follow; she waits for an invitation. It seems paramount that Alex allow her into her home with a recognized admission, even if Astra knows she is not entirely welcome or wanted.

“You coming?” Alex asks.

Astra steps through and Alex slams the door behind her, rattling the metal key ring mounted beside the door frame.

“How long have you been standing out there like an idiot?” Alex cuts, roughly taking the proffered lemonade from Astra’s outstretched hand. She trots about her kitchen and bangs cabinet doors, overly loud and grating to Astra’s ears.

“Not… not too long, I believe,” Astra says.

“Lie. Ms. Krakowski asked me about the strange lady standing outside of my apartment door when I made my way up. It takes her at least ten minutes to get down the stairs to the lobby.”

“Perhaps… some small amount of time, then.”

“Why didn’t you…” Alex holds up two fingers and points toward her eyes, then motions back and forth at the door. She pours the lemonade into a plastic cup and twists the top back in place, sighing. “Didn’t you see I wasn’t here?”

“I didn’t engage my extrasensory vision. It seemed like an invasion of privacy.”

Alex takes a sip of the lemonade, and then laughs humorlessly. “Oh, so _now_ you’re worried about how I feel?”

“I have been… I… I am always concerned with how you feel.”

“Disappearing for damn-near a month without so much as a whisper of contact indicates otherwise, General,” Alex argues, slamming the cup down on the counter so that the liquid sloshes onto the tile.

“It was not fair to you for me to approach you any sooner,” Astra tries to explain. “I was not in a stable enough place to reconcile everything that had happened. I needed to observe the mourning period as mandated by my culture, needed to discuss the outcome of events with Kara. Needed to process… all that I’ve done to your people, to my pla—my planet,” her voice stutters, wavers, feeble and lacking when she speaks of Krypton. “What I did to my troops, and how poorly I treated you, Alexandra. You were in no position to give what I wanted, and yet I—I took it anyway.”

“ _Took_ it?” Alex asks, slurps the lemonade messily and lewdly, wipes at her upper lip with the back of her hand. “What exactly did you take, Astra?”

Astra clenches her jaw, recalls with a superior, military-trained memory the breathy gasps Alex made against her neck, the superficial bite marks on the agent’s shoulder, the shuddering muscles beneath her fingertips.

“I… propositioned you.” Astra dips her head, unable to hold Alex’s eye. “You were… I exploited our relationship.”

“ _You_ exploi—fuck, Astra,” Alex mutters, stepping out from behind the counter to approach Astra. Her human fingers curl in on themselves into balled fists; Astra knows what it feels like when people disappoint you, personally, professionally, knows that sometimes you just want to _hit something_.

“How in the hell do you—what are those?” Alex asks, sidetracked by the pot Astra holds before her like a Rao-forged shield.

“Oh,” Astra looks down at the flowers in hand. “Forget-me-nots,” she says, sets the flowers atop the counter and rotates the pot so that Alex can see her name painted on the top portion. “I shattered the pot with the Forget-me-nots I had grown for you in the garden when I… when I ran from you.”

“Forget-me-nots?” Alex asks, studying the flowers. Her fury subsides momentarily as she surveys the electric blue petals, the tiny dab of yellow in the middle juxtaposed so perfectly against the boldness of the blue—Astra wonders why she hasn’t given Kara a pot of them as well. The enervating warmth of that yellow contrasts and complements the comforting, cool strength of the cerulean. It’s like the plant was made for the Danvers sisters.

Perhaps… perhaps it was her plea to the both of them.

_Remember the good times we had, Little One._

_Please don’t let your hatred of me blind you, Alexandra._

“They’re for me?” Alex asks her.

“Only ever for you, Alexandra,” Astra offers half a smile, emboldened by Alex’s softening expression. “I had hoped… I had hoped we could begin afresh. I… I never meant to… to force your hand.”

“You…” Alex’s eyes flit between the flowers and Astra, rove her body and then close, tightly, as Alex heaves a shuddering breath. “You are so wrong you can’t even see it.”

“Pardon me?” Astra asks, stepping closer to Alex but then pausing, thinking better of overcrowding the woman.

Astra cannot back her into a physical or emotional corner, cannot force Alex to engage in anything in which she has no investment, especially if Astra’s feelings are unrequited. Astra understands now, after long months consuming multiple human medias, that the relational dynamics of humans are significantly different than those on Krypton. For her, intimacy equates to a certain degree of commitment. At least it always had, in her culture. But early on, as a foot soldier with little ties to anyone, her trysts were superficial, infrequent, meaningless. The same could be said for soldiers on earth, and Astra dare not get her hopes up for something more.

It took her long enough to puzzle out that she still loved the DEO agent despite everything Alex had put her through; because in the end, Alex helped her to gain the trust of the one person that still mattered in her life, helped to grant her the freedom she desired to explore and nurture a relationship Astra never believed she’d be able to salvage. Without Alex, she would never have gotten to a semi-stable place with Kara. Her attention throughout the entire period of hiding was so… wonderful, so far above what she needed to do for her job… Astra couldn’t help but notice every minuscule detail that rendered Alexandra exceptional.

A siren from miles away stirs her from her thoughts, brings her back to Alexandra’s kitchen, to the flowers and the resentment and the lemonade and the unspoken affirmations. Alex’s heart rate is still elevated, her pulse still pounding, her eyes accusing Astra of a crime she can’t quite wrap her brain around. Her hand is splayed against the tile of the counter top, centimeters from the flowers; with just one nudge Alex could topple the offering and shatter something far more fragile than a terracotta planter.

“You,” Alex moves within touching distance and pushes against Astra’s chest with both hands, with all her might, but Astra only retreats a single step out of courtesy. “Don’t—” Alex shoves her again, seems to be corralling her into the front of the apartment, herding her toward the door. “Understand!” Alex shoves a final time and Astra’s shoulder blades hit the wall of Alex’s entrance, the doorknob jutting annoyingly into her lower back. She shifts to the side but can’t outmaneuver Alex’s wrath.

“You say you exploited me,” Alex challenges her.

“I can only offer my sincerest apolo—”

“Shut up,” Alex commands. “There’s two parts to a proposition. You propose. I accept. That’s w-what makes me feel like you forgot about… about _me_ in all of this.”

Her voice hitches higher; on Krypton, mourners delivered dirges with that same conviction of feeling, with an inconsolable sense of loss. Alex is crying and Astra can’t help but feel she’s allowed something precious to slip through her fingers, like red sand wet with blood.

“I thought about you every day,” Astra confesses, dares not reach out to touch her.

“You were gone _for a month,_ Astra!” Alex shoves again but there’s nowhere for Astra to go. “You left and I couldn’t know if you had adjusted to your powers. I can’t tell you the number of times Kara broke down when she first got here, and that was with my whole family around her! Who was looking after you, Astra? Why didn’t you talk to me?!”

“I couldn’t… I thought I had compelled you to respond. Given you something you didn’t want, something you could never… you… you said it was a mistake, Alexandra.” Astra cannot maintain her composure. She’s a general, a soldier, but she can’t face hurting this human crying before her. Her own eyes feel hotter than the roasting furnaces of Fort Rozz. “I didn’t… it didn’t occur to me that you would worry so.”

Alex’s face shatters like porcelain thrown against bricks. “You thought I… I didn’t care about what we had?”

“I could never expect—”

“How could you—”

“It’s not as if we were—”

“How dare you!”

“Alexandra, I was trying to save you pain—”

“Don’t start that self-sacrificing bullshit with me you—”

“I only did what I thought was best—”

“Shut up!” Alex shouts, and the slap against Astra’s face is tenuous and deficient, nothing more than a tap of a finger registered by her toughened nerve receptors. It hurts Alex’s hand so much more than it hurts Astra’s cheek.

“Goddammit!” Alex yells, and crowds Astra up against the door, bangs her fist on the open wood above Astra’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, I’m… sorry.” Her tears are warm and her eyes are redder than the sands of battle in the Tadnoriel Desert. Her voice cracks and shakes, but Alex finally lowers her volume: “You left before I got the chance to tell you…”

“Tell me…?”

Alex lowers her tense fists to rest on Astra’s shoulders. She steps fully into her for the first time in weeks, brings their foreheads together and aligns their noses so that it’s difficult to determine where one shade of human skin fades and the similar coloring on the Kryptoninan picks up. Even their dark brown hair blends together, their muscles straining simultaneously under the other’s touch.

“That first day you kissed me?” Alex breathes against Astra, rubs her fingers along her shoulders, reverent, disbelieving, slipping beneath the edge of Kara’s silly cardigan to touch the skin of her clavicle. “Do you remember?”

“Vividly,” Astra responds, curls her fingers tighter against Alex’s waist. The woman is _shaking_ beneath her.

“It was a Tuesday. Beautiful outside. Your garden was lovely. _You_ were lovely. All of the information you gave the DEO allowed us to infiltrate the base, and it was all coming to a head. The ambush we had planned against Non’s forces was only two days away. You kissed me and I kissed you back because I _wanted_ to. I gave in because I thought… if I didn’t make it back…” Alex kisses her sweetly, pushes her lips against Astra’s mouth so briefly Astra wonders if she imagined it. “I would’ve wanted to die, knowing what it was like to be with you.”

“Truly?” Astra releases a relieved breath, slides her hands over the back of Alex’s thin shirt, allows her fingers to climb the ladder of her resilient vertebrae.

“I thought _I_ was exploiting you,” Alex confesses, her head falling, weighted by guilt. “You had no reason to believe I was anyone other than Allison Smith. Astra, you had no idea who you were and I took advantage of you. But every bit of information was essential. We had so few casualties, took a number of enemy combatants alive—even took your advice on those likely to reform. We’ve begun integration classes at the DEO.”

Alex smiles through her tears, but pushes forward. Such a brave, curious little human:

“You gave up everything—your power, your family, your identity, and I got to see who you were without it. And I couldn’t help it—you… you… how could I not want you? When you stopped me that day I didn’t stand a chance. I felt you, tracing those symbols on my back, felt it when you wrote ‘love’ in Kryptonese on my skin, like…” Alex shuts her eyes, grips tighter against Astra’s shirt. “Like you’re doing right now.”

“Oh,” Astra stops her movements, hadn’t even recognized she’d been brushing her fingers in patterns over the toned expanse of Alex’s back. “I didn’t notice.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t feel it,” Alex says. “After I left you, knowing I had to fight, I hated myself. Not because I didn’t want you, but the way it happened… it was wrong.”

“Oh darling,” Astra mumbles, and she doesn’t realize she’s slipped into Kryptonese, unfathomable symbols stroking her lips and tongue, fighting their way into the world.

“What?” Alex mumbles, but it’s so breathy it hardly matters.

Alex is kissing her, her neck, her jaw, her cheek, her forehead, all very brief, all very tender, on the edge of chaste. Her mouth is hot against Astra’s eyelids, her hands warm as they cradle her face, as Alex apologetically caresses the cheek she had slapped only moments ago. Astra pulls her nearer, so near that their denim rubs together in a titillating brush of friction, fabric whispering against each other along the lower halves of their bodies.

“I just… I know that… that you know I’ve fallen in love with you,” Astra says, so close, _so close_ against Alex’s face.

And previous loyalties and guilt and relations be damned, something organic has grown and not just bloomed, but prospered and _flourished_ between them. Forget-me-nots in the sunshine and loaded revolver magazines on the coffee table. Lemonade and coffee and the occasional terrible wildlife documentary. Powers and missions and guns and lasers and spades and soil and black clothing and tactical gear and gardening gloves. So terribly determined and lax and neither one of them can be pigeonholed, neither is _just one thing;_ and it’s so lovely, so beautiful that they’re adaptable.

“And…?” Alex asks.

“I don’t want you to feel as though you’re at fault for that. You owe me nothing. You’ve already… you have fulfilled more than your duty, Agent Danvers,” Astra amends her original statement, which had sounded like something along the lines of _how can I ever repay you,_ or, _I’m eternally in your debt_ , or, _I would gladly carry your child at the slightest hint of a request._

“That’s terribly unfortunate for you,” Alex replies, moves her weighted arms to lock behind Astra’s neck and tilt her head down. “Because I am so in love with you I don’t think there’s any getting out of it.”

Astra meets Alex’s advance and they kiss again, bodies flush and lips tingling and tears of sorrow morphing, transforming, just like the pair of them, into something so close to joy that they dare not question it. Getting here took so much more effort than she’d ever believed she could expend, but feeling Alex run her tongue along her lips, breathe hot and wet and _alive_ against her mouth, she knows the trials have been worth it. Losing her memory and her planet and even Kara, for a decade—the tortuous suffering in Fort Rozz—she’d endure it all again, to know she could stand in Alex’s arms, the flowery scent tingeing the air with sweetness, the taste of lemonade tangy on Alex’s tongue. Just like a month ago, her senses overload with _Alex_ , but she has no desire to run. No desire to ever slip away from this woman again.

Astra breaks away from a flushed Alex but keeps her close, never wants to know a world where she’s not allowed to hold her. Alex twirls her fingers in the back of Astra’s hair and sways with her, her human face flushed to a becoming, rosey hue.

“We have much to discuss,” Astra says, running her thumbs over the hemline of Alex’s running shirt.

“Flowers on the table and lemonade as refreshment?” Alex smirks. “Nice to know you keep things consistent.”

“Hhhhmmm,” Astra smiles at her, steps away to give the still-flushed human a bit of breathing room. “I never said this before, but I find you very beautiful, Alexandra.”

“I’m not mad anymore, there’s no need,” Alex deflects, running a hand through her sweaty hair.

“It’s true. After all the misunderstandings and secrets between us, don’t you want the truth?”

“What I want, is to go hop in the shower, and then come back, sit at this counter, and drink that lemonade while you and me talk about what this means.”

“I want that as well,” Astra says, squeezing Alex’s hand to reassure her.

Alex’s brows wiggle slightly as she turns, tugs the hem of her shirt overhead, and starts toward the hall.

“Well, if you want to shower with me—?”

“I…” Astra feels the heat that was in Alex’s cheeks transfer to the pit of her stomach, tug at her, wail and call and beg her to follow Alex down the hall.

But perhaps not this morning.

“I think I will remain here. As I said, we… should probably discuss some things before… we… _shower_.”

“Pity,” Alex shrugs, but Astra can tell from the tilt of her grin that her human ( _her human_ ) is only joking. “Make yourself at home in the meanwhile. But if you change your mind, be sure and get in while the water’s still hot.” Alex traipses down the hall and Astra sees the compression shorts come flying back into her field of vision, followed by a pair of underwear and a sports bra.

And by Rao does she want to follow, but everything is so new and beautiful and perfect, she daren’t risk it until they’ve had a proper sit-down chat, with less shoving and slapping… but more kissing is always an option. While Alex showers, Astra occupies herself by fixing a cup of tea, snooping around Alex’s common room, and making extra good use of that x-ray vision to watch Alex shower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Waaaaahhhhhh!!!!!
> 
> And we're done! Twenty-thousand words later, an extra four chapters, and a lot more angst than I originally set out to write. I don't ever want to juggle real world with two multi-chap WIPs again. It's been fun, but also a little exhausting.
> 
> However, it's been made all the better for the wonderful response I've gotten for this fic! These two are my faves and I love that other people enjoy their dynamic as much as I do. Still believing Astra isn't dead. And, if the season two rumors hold any truth, I'm still banking on the final shot of the season being Astra's eyes opening somewhere in that pod in deep space, and then narrowing with murderous rage. CUE NATIONAL CITY DESTRUCTION AND EVEN FURTHER FOR HER TO GO TO GET BACK IN KARA'S GOOD GRACES!!!!
> 
> Sorry, a gal can dream :D Anywho, if you're anything like me and like to leave comments on multi-chapter fics once they're finished, now's your chance! Oh, and I'm probably going to rename this piece "Forget Me Not" after a few days (thanks to postcardfromhell for that suggestion). It seems to go with the theme, and is a heck of a lot shorter.
> 
> Thank you, as always, for reading. You really don't know what all the kudos and comments mean to us fic writers, y'all. Have a wonderful weekend!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm making it a personal challenge to include as many outside Laura Benanti references as possible.


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